During our Noyce research project in the Cache River area last summer, a fellow teacher, Jane Sechrest, and I started wondering about our local river, here in Harrisburg - the Saline River. As you drive through Southern Illinois, you notice that almost every stream or creek has a sign. But there's not one for the Saline River. We knew there was a river and that our county was named after it, but we weren't sure where it was. That made us wonder if our students, or even the residents of Saline County, knew where it was. Of course, we found it. Our students can walk to it from the school. So, we decided to become river watchers. Last September, another fourth grade teacher, Lisa Ozment, and I participated in a workshop called Stream Discovery which was provided by The National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (www.ngrrec.org), located in Godfrey, IL - right on the Mississippi River. This workshop trains teachers to lead students to monitor local streams and rivers and then report findings in a national database.
First, our classes took a field trip to the river, where students observed and sketched the area. They listed the many things they saw: a great blue heron wading in the water, an eagle flying over; trees, shrubs and other vegetation; as well as tires and junk in the river. Then, we had experts from SIU, our local university, speak to our classes about the importance of rivers. They talked about how people use rivers, ways water gets polluted, invasive species, and the importance of clean water. Of course the kids thought they were awesome! Special speakers are just, you know - special!
The students decided we should find out if the Saline River was polluted. So, the next week we decided to do chemical tests and see just what was in our water. We did our fall chemical survey. I taught the students about all the chemicals that could be in water and what they would mean. Basically, they just learned the names of compounds (phosphate, coliform, nitrate...) and whether or not it was desirable for them to be in the water. The next day, I made a quick trip to the river at lunch and got some water samples. We used a low cost water monitoring kit made by LaMotte (www.lamotte.com) to test for pH, turbidity, and several chemicals. The kids loved this because it was like magic - the water changes color! They put water and different tablets in test tubes, shook them for a period of time, and compared the color to a chart to determine the level/ presence of the chemical. We found out that the quality of water in the Saline River was pretty good! We're going to do the winter chemical survey next week (while it's technically still winter) and compare our results.
There is so much to the Saline River project that it will take a few posts for me to describe it all. So, I'll tell you about the physical and biological surveys of the river that we did, and hopefully post a video. Then I'll talk about possible projects for the future - from a "man-on-the-street" survey to find out just who knows where the Saline River is - to getting a sign - to maybe organizing a clean up day. This is a cool project, but the most important part is how engaged my students were and still are. Some of them feel sorry for our poor river that doesn't even have a sign - and want to do something about it! They can't wait to do the next surveys. They are interested in their environment and they feel like they are scientists doing important work. Which is true: they are.
