BWE rainforest field trip

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Big Wal­nut Ele­men­tary School stu­dents recently took a field trip to a Costa Rican Rain­for­est, thanks to Doug Germann’s fourth and fifth grade REACH students.

The REACH stu­dents were study­ing trop­i­cal rain­forests and their impor­tance to the planet’s biol­ogy; and since trav­el­ing to a rain­for­est would be cost-prohibitive, they built their own mini-rainforest in one of the school’s mod­u­lar buildings.

“My stu­dents were study­ing bio­mes of the world as part of their sci­ence cur­ricu­lum, and in the process they built their very own trop­i­cal rain­for­est,” Ger­mann said. “The stu­dents researched rain forests them­selves; they found out what plants, crit­ters and birds lived in their part of the rain forest.”

Ger­mann said the stu­dents spent 32 hours after school con­struct­ing the sim­u­lated Costa Rican rain­for­est. They cre­ated snakes, bats, spi­ders, frogs and birds that would inhabit the rain­for­est, includ­ing orchids, macaws, hum­ming­birds, and even a two-toed sloth.

“One room even included wildlife in the emer­gent layer of the rain­for­est,” Ger­mann said. “Tour guides took all the BWE classes through in 10-minute tours, like an in-house field trip, and we even had two par­ent evenings on May 17 and May 21.”

BWE’s REACH stu­dents get to stay together for another year. The fifth graders become sixth graders next year, and the fourth graders become fifth graders, and they all will attend the new grade five and six Big Wal­nut Inter­me­di­ate School, located at the for­mer Big Wal­nut Mid­dle School build­ing on Baugh­man Street.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jun 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.