Mrs. Searway's Fourth Graders Discover Wetlands
This year the fourth graders from Mary E. Silveira School learned a lot about our local wetlands. We visited our local watershed in Blackstone Canyon and took five soil samples from the canyon.

Mrs. Searway's Five Soil Samples
Fourth Graders exploring Blackstone Canyon hands-on through mist and sunshine

Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District Wetland

While observing the various types of wetland wildlife the students collected data and drew the different characteristics of the species they watched.

In early December 2004 we visited our local Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District Wetlands. Missy came in from the Point Reyes Bird Observatory to educate the students about birds in our local wetlands. We walked and observed many birds in our wetlands.


Students got exposed to various scientific equipment like bird watching with a highly developed telescope.

That afternoon we did reconstruction on Miller Creek: pulling non native ivy and big blackberry stumps. We cleaned up quite an area.
Parents also helped the students with uprooting larger fauna like these large blackberry roots.

Invasive species causes the problems for native plants to grow. Here the students are removing non-native ivy from their local community to be replaced by native flora and fauna.

This year we participated in the JASON Expedition: Disappearing Wetlands program through the Bay Model Association. In January 2005 we took on the project of creating a triptych mural of 5 foot by 5 foot panels, which visually depicting our local wetland wildlife and floral and fauna. These were displayed on the JASON exhibit live broadcast and 19 hands-on inquiry-based learning stations.

Here Mrs. Searway's fourth graders are at the beginning stages of their mural project.


Not only did this mural project allow the students to learn about the wetlands it also expanded the foundation of art: shape, form, color, line, proportion, scale, relation, two dimensional verses three dimensional.


At this exhibit station students were able to work a replica of a watershed diorama. They were visually able to see how natural resources are used in towns, pollution, and how a water cycle is created.
At the Wild Wetland Food Web students choose a stuffed animal and found it's scientific name. Then they had to place the animal on a three dimensional food web and to find out who was their predators and who were their preys.
All in all the students learned the importance of our local wetlands compared to those in Louisiana and why it is important to conserve and restore they wetlands we have today.