Posters

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Fernhill Wetlands- Lisa Cunningham- Evergreen Middle School

Lisa brought her 8th grade students to do research and community service at Fernhill Wetlands outside of Forest Grove on April 25th, 2012. For this fieldtrip we partnered with Clean Water Services who manage the wetland and the Cascades to Coast GK12 program from PSU.

In total the group planted 285 trees and shrubs as well as 150 herbaceous plugs.

“Like many wetland areas, particularly ones that are in the process of being restored, invasive species are a problem at Fernhill, which is why we planted native vegetation for our community service. In order to help students better understand the nature of invasive species we did a poster project based on the “Ultimate Invader” activity,” explained Lisa.

“The project of planting native vegetation will help the wetland restoration efforts as well as bring more visitors to Fernhill. Currently a visitor center is being built at the wetlands in order to host more groups and increase education and awareness for the area”.

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New Zealand Mud Snail- Sena Berquist

Sena describes her project that she led for 26 students…”This fall my class inventoried invertebrates in the stream on our school property. We plan to add the information to the stream web site in the next month. We then studied the New Zealand mudsnail, knowing it has been found in rivers in our county. The kids then made posters explaining what the snail is, where it is found and why it creates problems when it is in a watershed”.

“The students wrote about the species for the posters we made. Having their writing be for a real purpose and knowing it would be displayed in the community resulted in more motivation and a better end product. The very dry section of our science textbook on habitats, adaptation, food chains/webs and classification of animals came alive when we went to the stream and later talked about all of those concepts in the context of the New Zealand mudsnail. The kids were fascinated by this little creature that could cause such big problems and many of the “pieces” we had learned about became parts of a much bigger mental picture”.

Sena hopes that educating the next generation about invasive species will impact the community in a positive way. Currently, the posters work towards the fight against the New Zealand mud snail in the local watershed and children are most likely spreading the information to their parents.

Sena plans to continue conduct a yearly invertebrate survey of our creek and post the results on stream web. The class will also incorporate invasive species into the classroom life science unit.

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New Zealand MudSnail posters – Becky Siebold (4th grade)

“I teach 4th grade so I wanted to narrow our focus to just one species to start with. I chose the New Zealand Mudsnail.”

Students in small groups read through an article and took notes on 4 different questions about the New Zealand Mud Snail: “what are they? how did they get here?, why should we care?, and what should we do?”. They then typed up their notes and gathered pictures to make a poster.

The posters were hung in the school hallways for other students and teachers to read and learn from. The students mostly focused on educating the public about these invasive animals. This topic connected back to the animal unit they did in the fall, but also provided a “new” idea to most of the fourth grade students. This project was also something for the students to do that would help them further develop their cooperation, research, and typing skills.

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New Zealand Mudsnail posters

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Invasive Species Posters description

Wilson – 7th Grade

Posters –
Posters define invasive species, describe their identification and impacts, and what people can do.

Outcome –
Students learn that they can have a positive contribution to their community

Further Application –
The posters will be laminated and posted at strategic places in their community in Cottage Grove in partnership with the Coast Fork Watershed Council