DEQ works with teachers to engage students in environmental education activities
May 24, 2010; Sandy Mueller, DEQ Central Office
During Earth Week, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Water Programs staff Sandy Mueller, Aimee Budd and Stuart Torbeck collaborated with the first-grade teachers at Bon Air Elementary School in Chesterfield County to develop engaging, learning activities focused on the land area that drains into a stream known as a watershed, water quality, and pollution prevention.
The staff led activities included:
- A stream walk where students collected and identified aquatic bugs and took simple chemical measurements to assess the health of the stream.
- A watershed address activity to allow students to locate their school on a map and identify their local watershed and the bigger Chesapeake Bay watershed.
- EnviroScapes model demonstration for each student to learn how pollution on the land travels to streams and rivers when it rains or snow melts.
- Aquatic bugs demonstration where students identified different types of aquatic bugs and what they tell us about the health of a stream.
- A storm drain dye trace activity to track dyed water entering a storm drain and exiting at a nearby stream to simulate the path pollutants can take from the land to streams.
- Storm drain marking activity to alert people not to dump anything down a storm drain since storm drains lead to streams.