 |
| PCD seniors investigating the woods behind Lund |
One of the ongoing projects at Providence Country Day is to make great use of the outdoor space. The school sits on a beautiful campus, offering opportunities to athletes and nature lovers alike. Of course, it is also a great spot to learn about the natural world and humans' impact on it. One group investigating just that is Ms. Hanover's Environmental Science class. The class, open to seniors, provides a rigorous study of the science of the natural world.
 |
| They scanned the forest floor for microarthropods |
Recently, the class has been outside in the area behind Lund Hall, which is also the site of a future nature trail. The students have been conducting a biodiversity study of microarthropods on the forest floor. Arthropods, for those whose grasp of zoology isn't quite what it used to be, are invertebrate animals with exoskeletons, segmented bodies, and jointed appendages. We see them all the time: insects, arachnids, and crustaceans are all arthropods. But they are not limited to mosquitoes, spiders, and lobster. As the Environmental Science class has learned, they can be quite small and live in great numbers on the forest floor.
 |
|
They bagged their findings, bringing it back to the lab for
further research |
|
Although the woods might have at first appeared uninteresting to the group of seniors that have spent years looking at them, there is no doubt that PCD's natural area is home to a wide array of wildlife. And the activity served as a powerful reminder to the students that, sometimes, the learning inside the classroom is no more important than the learning outside of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment