Dissection demo! Mollie Sprague and Mikaela Frank at Lincoln Community School--with the help of TIC liaison Bob Wible and Doug Zehner and Paul Urband, two members of the Central Vermont Chapter of Trout Unlimited--provided a wonderful dissection demonstration and hands-on learning experience for LCS 5th and 6th graders. Here is the great slide show Mollie put together. Stream Explorers resources The national office of Trout Unlimited works hard to recruit youth who will be the next generation of stewards of our environment, especially its cold water rivers and streams. Toward that end, it has created the Stream Explorers program, designed to appeal to elementary and middle school students. The Stream Explorers program also provides informational and educational materials for parents and teachers to use with their children. These attractive, colorful four-page documents include interesting stories on topics such as trout food, trout life cycle, watersheds, human impacts on trout habitat, etc. Click the following link to go to the folder containing eight Stream Explorer publications. Almost time for Release Day! What's the water temperature? Joe's TIC "dance card" is filling up fast with Release Days. My first of the season will be this Friday, when the students of Karli Love's 5th grade class at the Dorset School will release their fry into the upper Mettawee River in Dorset Hollow. They'll also be collecting and classifying macroinvertebrates and learning how to "read" a stream and its diverse sections/areas. I'll have most of next week off, but after that, I'm signed up to help with six Release Days in 10 days, on May 16, 17, 18, 20, 24, and 25. It'll be a busy week and a half! As an example, here's the schedule I got from Mikaela Frank for Lincoln Community School's Release Day on May 16. And what's the water temperature of local streams?
I just got back from the Castleton River near my home on a grey and rainy Wednesday afternoon when the air temperature was 48 degrees. So what was the river's temperature? 46 degrees! That's not an indication of what the temperature of your release stream is at present, so you should get out there and measure it. But almost certainly, waters will start to warm rapidly over the next two weeks, as the daytime temperature will be well into the 60s for most of that time. Finally, on a hike with my Hornbeck canoe into Little Rock Pond in the Green Mountain National Forest on Monday, I encountered many beautiful wild flowers. Here are two photos I took.
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Joe Mark, Lead Facilitator, Vermont Trout in the Classroom
In June 2012, I retired after 40 years in higher education, having spent the last 32 years of my career as dean at Castleton. One of the first things I volunteered to do in retirement was to work with Jim Mirenda to help the Dorset School, where his kids and my Vermont grandkids attend, start a TIC program. Gradually that commitment grew into my current role, which is both demanding and highly rewarding. Categories |