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Model behavior
3-D Enviroscape shows Akiva students how environment works
YOUNGSTOWN
Students at Akiva Academy recently got a hands-on environmental science lesson with the Enviroscape landscape model.
Kathi Vrable-Bryan, administrator of the Mahoning Soil and Water Conservation District, used the three-dimensional model to show students where pollutants originate before they are carried by stormwater into streams and lakes, where they impair water quality.
The presentation, made free to school, garden and community groups in Mahoning County, is adaptable for age 5 to adult by adjusting the vocabulary level for the age group.
Vrable-Bryan teaches by the Socratic method, asking questions of the students, listening for any responses they give and reinforcing correct answers.
“What watershed are we standing in?” Vrable-Bryan asked the students at the start of the presentation, answering her own question by saying: “Crab Creek.”
When Vrable-Bryan asked where Crab Creek flows, a student correctly answered that it flows into the Mahoning River.
“What we do in our watershed today will affect watersheds downstream from us,” Vrable-Bryan told the students gathered around the model.
A watershed is a land area from which water drains into a particular body of water, she explained.
The students in fourth through seventh grades took turns sprinkling harmless substances from shakers onto the landscape to represent various types of water pollutants.
For example, table salt represented road salt used for snow and ice removal; red dye represented oil and gasoline spilled on the road by motor vehicles; and chocolate sprinkles represented animal excrement.
Cocoa mimicked sediment; shredded paper represented litter; Italian seasonings substituted for yard waste; and Kool-Aid represented pesticides and herbicides. Real soap was used for detergents.
The portable landscape model includes a grain-and-animal farm, a hillside with trees, a construction site, a residential community, a golf course, a factory, a waste-treatment plant, a road with bridges and vehicles, a stream, a lake and storm and sanitary sewers.
Once the students sprinkle all the “pollutants” across the landscape, students spray water onto it from bottles to simulate rainfall, causing all the “pollutants” to be washed downhill to the stream and lake.
The presentation emphasizes the importance of preventing pollutants from entering storm drains, from which water flows untreated into streams and lakes, and the importance of planting and maintaining trees, shrubs and grasses to prevent soil erosion.
Kathy Mioni, Akiva principal, said the Enviroscape reinforces the academy’s goal of teaching social responsibility, including environmental responsibility. “It involves teaching the children to be better citizens,” she said.
“It’s one thing for the children to listen, but when they’re actually involved in doing it, the retention rate and the rate of learning increase tenfold,” Mioni said of the Enviroscape, which emphasizes “learning by doing.”
Akiva Academy is a private elementary school housed at the Jewish Community Center on Gypsy Lane.
“For me to talk about it in class and for them to pretend is one thing. For them to see it is a lot better for them,” Catherine Katz, science teacher, said of her students. “It’s important that they learn that what goes into the water ends up in your drinking glass,” she added.
“It’s enhancing what the teachers are already doing,” Vrable-Bryan said of her presentation. “Because they’re engaged in it, they’re going to remember,” Vrable-Bryan said of student participation.
“Putting chemicals into the water, we might not think is harming it, but, in reality, it is harming it,” said Abigail Scharf, a sixth- grader.
With the landscape model, “You can see how one little thing affects the whole land,” Scharf said.
D’Ella Heschmeyer, another sixth-grader, said she learned from the Enviroscape presentation “how much people pollute the Earth from doing things that we don’t even think are polluting the Earth.”
She said of Vrable-Bryan: “It was really cool how she demonstrated it all.”