SAS! Bellevue Week Three

Week Three! Teamwork, collaboration, cooperation - no matter how you put it, it's all critical to scientific work!

This, week, we spent the first part of the day on a group challenge - crossing the chocolate river! While this game is a ton of fun - one of my favorites to play and to facilitate - it hits on some very real life skills. With our smaller numbers, we should be working very well as a group, but we are still having some struggles along those lines. It was interesting to watch as they attempted - and failed at - this challenge. Poor communication and a lack of a plan seemed to be the largest downfalls. We processed the activity, and I asked them to reflect this week on ways in which it could work better. We'll give it another go!

We then turned our focus once more to animal tracking. This week, we applied the anatomy lesson from Week Two to examine tracks in the snow. We broke into groups, and used plaster casts to make "track stories" in the snow. We then switched, and used field guides to try to unravel the story - the cast of characters, and the main plot line!

We also introduced the concept of habitat, and learned the names of two main habitat areas in Bellevue (see below). The students then made predictions about this question: which habitat do you think has more species of animals? This will serve as the basis for our field research project the next several weeks.