We are embedding a number of new science standards into our Amazing Adventure in Nature field study to Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge in Concord, Massachusetts. Fortunately we are the recipients of a Nyanza grant that was awarded to Massachusetts Audubon at Drumlin Farm for education about the SUASCO Watershed which supports this adventure. We have participated in this grant for the past three years and each year we work with Drumlin Farm to develop and deepen our efforts.
As I've mentioned in the past, this year we worked with Grassroots Wildlife Conservation to help raise endangered spadefoot toad tadpoles as part of this study. And, with reflection related to last year's Amazing Adventure at Great Meadows, this year we've changed the field study a bit to resemble the show, "The Amazing Race," to some degree.
During the adventure students will move from station to station throughout the park to do a large number of standards-based explorations including ponding, water quality tests, river poetry writing, animal habitat, food web, and energy cycle observations, and more. I look forward to traversing the wetlands refuge soon. I'm sure that as we embark on this newly revised adventure for the first time, we'll find new ways to deepen and develop the study for future exploration as well--explorations we may want to do early in the year next year perhaps leading up to the MCAS tests rather than after it since the test asks students to answer questions we'll study during this adventure. That's to be decided in the days ahead.
