Recap of the year in Concord, Lots of TREC work in Concord, NH Options

[Tom_Crumrine]

12 May 2006


Dan Lane working hard on taking boards to our Concord research plots. Notice his helpful classmates.

When looking back on this year with my BioII students I have realized that we have done a ton of work that was influenced by my experiences with the TREC program. I was lucky enough to be able to work with an ecology style class that meshed very well with the work but I am also certain that a great many of the tasks we undertook would not have been possible without TREC.

Our year began with a unit on water quality around our area. We traveled to 8 water bodies and tested them for DO, TSS, temperature, biological diversity, pH and a few other factors. My students did all of the testing work and by the end became quite adept at using all of the technical equipment. This type of work is something I definitely saw when I was out at the streams with Morgan Johnston and Mike Gooseff last summer. There is a lot of work to be done and analyzed and then when you have done all of that work you still have to go back and think about what it all means. The highlight of this unit was a visit from Morgan Johnston who traveled over from UVM to share her work with my students.

The year continued when in November it began to snow. My ecology class always studies the science of winter but this year we compared NH organisms to AK organisms. While in Alaska I was able to do quite a big of research on the adaptations of Alaskan organisms to the cold. I presented this information to the students and then had them explore how NH organisms are adapted in similar ways. We used my Alaska experience as a vehicle to learn about NH and it worked very nicely.



When we were tiring of winter we were invigorated by a chance to help out some younger students. This photograph shows Sol and Will listening to a science presentation by a local 5th grader. While Donie was reaching out to help us we were doing our part by reaching out to younger students. Every year seniors go the the 5th grade science fair and it is always huge hit. The older students love it and the younger ones are always in awe of the seniors that come to see them.

Finally spring came and we were able to beging setting up research plots just like the ones that Donie uses in Alaska. Our goal was to create a smaller set of plots that would perform similar research to that being done by Donie. Over the next few entries I will catch everyone up on our progress here in Concord. While we have not accomplished quite as much as I planned, I am extremely proud of my students and remind them that their work will last for years.