This content has been created with the intent for the teacher to develop it to best suit their classroom setting. In its most basic form, students are asked to analyze wet and dry berry data to determine how water content changes (or doesn’t) for several berry species over the course of one season.
This lesson has multiple stages or
The night before I left Alaska I stayed up chatting with some of the scientists in the Toolik dining hall talking about my return to “normal civilization”. We spoke about the little habits that you pick up while at the field station and aren’t sure you’re going to let go (wearing sunglasses 24/7) as well as
PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is a program in which formal and informal educators spend 3-6 weeks participating in hands-on field research experiences in the polar regions. The goal of PolarTREC is to invigorate polar science education and understanding by bringing educators and polar researchers together.
Students will collect soil samples and analyze them with some of the same procedures used by researchers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Soil microfauna (e.g. nematodes) will be extracted from the samples using a Baermann funnel. Students will compare their own data to published data from researchers working in Antarctica.
PolarTREC has been an amazing experience, wow! The heart of the PolarTREC program is the field expedition, which allows the teacher to be embedded in a field research team. STEM educators are passionate about what they teach but often lack access to meaningful opportunities to participate in basic research. Programs like PolarTREC provide that missing
There is so much media hype and public misunderstanding regarding the issue of climate change that advanced students need to be equipped to sort through the information available, find data from appropriately moderated scientific data bases, and learn to support their views with good scientific evidence rather than emotion. This lesson provides the outline for giving students some preliminary
This article describes the upcoming travels of PolarTREC science teacher Nell Kemp from Kenwood Academy High School’s Academic Center. Ms. Kemp will be traveling to Toolik Field Station in Alaska to examine how arctic wolf spiders influence arctic food webs.
How can the ocean be colder than 0 degrees C, the temperature at which water freezes? As it turns out, the concentration of the particles (in this case, the ions from the salt) in ocean water lowers the temperature at which the saltwater will freeze. Students will learn how ocean water freezes at a lower temperature than freshwater by