Week Nine and Ten

Inside of Willow Bend! Tori, their building won
a sustainability award!

Hello all! 
A lot has progressed with my SRP these past couple of weeks!

Week Nine

I met with Cassandra last week to go over the pretest and posttest for the Alpine 6th graders. I developed the tests to be half multiple-choice, content-based questions, and the other half to learn about the students' attitudes toward water conservation by using scaled-response questions. For example, a content-based question would ask: "What is the definition of potable water?" and an attitude-based question would ask "I feel that conserving water is very important" with options varying from strongly agree to strongly disagree. My hope is that I can analyze the change in both the students' knowledge of water conservation and their attitude toward it. 

In my meeting, Cassandra approved my pretest, and we sent it to Cree, the teacher of the Alpine 6th graders (who have since taken the test). We also went over my classroom presentation. I have changed the second half of the lesson. Instead of doing a Socratic session (since that would probably be a bit boring), I worked with Cassandra to develop a different hands-on activity to keep the kids engaged and focused. 

Stack of Amazing Pretests

We used another Project WET lesson for the framework of the presentation. In this activity, we will place a bucket of water on the floor of the classroom (with a tarp underneath and towels ready). The students will sit in a circle around the bucket and will receive their own personal containers for water. Next, I simulate the development of Flagstaff as a town. To begin, a few students will receive small sponges. They represent the settlers or homesteaders of early Flagstaff, who used only a small amount of water in their daily lives. I want to talk about our own water supply (Lake Mary and ground water) to help make the lesson more applicable. The students will take 1 minute to take as much water from the bucket to their individual containers. Then, the town begins growing. There are more residents and farms. We repeat the same procedure except with more students and larger sponges. Eventually, we will end up with an industrialized city with very little to no water. 

View from Willow Bend

The point of the lesson is to get the kids to reflect and think about possible solutions to reduce water consumption, not on a personal level, but on a local city-wide level. Dr. Hartman asked me a good question recently: "Tell me more about environmental federalism... Why does that policy structure appeal to you?"

To answer, I feel that current water conservation education techniques focus too much on the individual level. In reality, much of our water waste and consumption comes from agriculture and industry. While everyone can work on individual consumption, there is a ton of room for improvement by the private sector. I would like the students to understand that there needs to be an effort made by both businesses and individuals to create a sustainable rate of water consumption, and that the government plays a key role in making sure this happens. 

Going back to the concept of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, I want the kids to understand that they can (and need to) make a difference by voicing their opinions. By illustrating water conservation in a federalist manner, I believe that the students will grasp the role of government in water conservation more easily, and I hope that it will make them more likely to be active in their local governments. 

During the weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. It was amazing to see the capitol, EPA, Smithsonian Museums and so much more! 

Week Ten

The Environmental Protection Agency building

This week, I met with Cassandra again for a dry or "wet" run of the lesson and presentation. I created my official lesson plan (for other teachers to follow), and I felt good about our practice run through the lesson. I will be presenting to the Alpine kids at 7:30 AM on Monday, so I hope they will wake up fast! For the rest of the weekend, I will just be practicing the lesson and gathering any last minute materials. 

I also received the pretest results from the class. So far, I have just been plugging in data into Microsoft Excel. I have yet to analyze the results, but from what I have seen so far, the kids have some knowledge of water conservation; however, there is a lot of room for improvement. 

Screen Shot of the Pretest Data

I'm very excited to see if my lesson makes any difference in the post-test results! Cree will have the Alpine students take the post test either sometime next week, so from here on out, I will simply be analyzing data! That might sound lame, but I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm hoping to apply some of the concepts I have learned in my statistics class to analyze the data (maybe I can even make Mr. Lamb proud).

My brother, friend, and I in front of Obama's house.
Don't forget to drink more water.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I highly doubt I will make Mr. Lamb proud.