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LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — On a sunny Wednesday morning when most students were stuck at their desks, nearly 100 Edgelea Elementary School fourth-graders headed out to the Celery Bog Nature Area to learn about the environment.
As they trekked through the woods and across the lawns of the Lilly Nature Center, students stopped to dig for mussels and amphibians. They held macroinvertebrates — insects without backbones — in the palm of their hands. They learned about soil erosion, and they measured the PH level in different liquids.
The field trip was the culmination of a yearlong educational program led by Johanna Brown of the Tippecanoe County Partnership for Water Quality. She visited fourth-grade classes at Edgelea once a month to lead science lessons on Indiana's environment and water quality.
"I think education does a good job of helping us learn about reading and writing and math," said Brown, who used to teach high school chemistry. "But our goal is to have students experience nature around them to get a good understanding of what science is and how they can explore their natural world and help take care of Indiana in the future."
Brown visits schools across Tippecanoe County — including Mintonye, Cole, Dayton and Happy Hollow elementary schools. But the Edgelea students were the only ones to visit the Celery Bog, she said.
Students were enthusiastic about Brown's visits.
"She makes everything not that boring," said Nathalya Chavez, 9. "She makes it a little game for us."
Nathalya and her classmate Precious Allen, 10, agreed that the best lesson was when Brown taught them how water quality impacts fish.
"When she taught us about fish, she had her little yellow fish and she told us how the gills suck the oxygen out of the water," Precious said. "She told us how when it gets really dirty, how they can die and stuff."
During the field day, Precious and Nathalya had the chance to learn a lot more about fish as they stopped by a table run by Jay Beugly, an aquatic ecology specialist at Purdue University.
At his table, Beugly had a tank filled with fish he had collected from the place where the Tippecanoe River meets the Wabash River. Beugly talked to the students about the diversity of the Wabash and how that helps researchers understand water quality.
"Some fish are very sensitive to pollution and some are not," Beugly said. "You can use fish diversity to get a feel for how clean or dirty water might be."
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Source: Journal & Courier, http://on.jconline.com/1JUsr7Y
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Information from: Journal and Courier, http://www.jconline.com
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