Our Stream Study activity session has always been a high quality scientific learning experience. It also has two intrinsically motivating aspects that particularly enthuse the students - catching things in the stream (occassionally they even catch fish!) and then looking at them under the microscopes and seeing their intenstines etc. moving around magnified 20x's.
They start by watching a short DVD of a HTV news report from several years back that tells of how the stream was once polluted by chemical waste being illegally dumped in the lake upstream killing off all the wildlife. Their investigation is to see if the stream has recovered. Fortunately it has and we don't send them into a toxic wasteland!
Having collected a variety of creatures from the stream they return to the Lab to find out what they are called and look at them under a microscope. A flow chart identifies the various fresh water shrimps, caddis larvae and mayfly nypmhs etc. and then a water quality sheet scores each animal for water quality. Some like a Rat-tailed maggot can survive in fairly polluted water and only score 1/2 out of 10 for water quality, whereas a Sonefly Nymph scores 10/10 as it it very intollerant to any pollution.
We have just put into service some brand new monocular style microscopes that are easier particularly for younger children to operate. There's 12 of them so each student has their own to use and doesn't need to wait a turn.
NB Just in case you were worried...hopefully no animals are harmed during this activity! They can survive out of water under a microscope for quite some time and then at the end of the session they are returned to the stream. Some of them have probably been viewed more than once and are getting used to it by now.
