McGee Students Study at Salmon River Park

McGee School's seventh grade class recently visited the Salmon River State Park.  

This day trip was not only fun for the students but was the culmination of over a month's preparation.  

According to McGee's Moodle site page, this interdisciplinary project had components in Geography, Science, Math, and Integrated Lanuage Arts.  

The Geography portion of the Salmon River Project involved analyzing migration patterns of the Atlantic Salmon, creating a map of Atlantic Salmon migration patterns, analyzing the effect of humans on the population of Atlantic Salmon, as well as describing how human-environment-interaction has affected Atlantic Salmon in the Connecticut River watershed.  

The science and math portion of involved research, graphing and creation of a power point presentation that addressed the the life cycle of the Atlantic Salmon, how environmental and human factors impact its journey, why is the Atlantic Salmon an endangered species, and what being done to restore Atlantic Salmon Populations.  

The ILA/Integrated Language Arts portion involved a jigsaw writing activity in which student in a group was assigned to write a journal entry from the perspective of an Atlantic salmon at one of the stages in the life cycle: Egg, Alevin, Fry, Parr, Smolt, and Adult Salmon.

For each journal entry, the student considered both the Geography theme of place (What is it like there for the salmon?) and how the salmon perceives the world at that stage in its existence.

At the Salmon River, students visted various stations led by McGee School teachers. Students learned about the geographical history of the Salmon River, tested the salinity, turbulence and velocity of the River.  

They also searched for and identified water dwelling insects and played a memory game that simulated the sensory trip salmons take to their spawning areas.

According to students, the actual releasing of the salmon fries into the river was the most exciting portion of the project.