Each semester, biology students have the opportunity to learn from an ongoing collaboration with the Harris Center while enjoying some time in a natural, outdoor classroom. 10th-grade Biology classes learned about our local ecosystem and various field collection techniques that ecologists use to calculate biodiversity. Their work contributes to a large, ongoing research project surveying the population of redback salamanders.
John Benjamin, a naturalist from the Harris Center, came to teach students in Anna Muncy, Valerie Moran, and Randy Stetzer’s biology classes about ecology topics and the natural world we have right outside in ConVal’s backyard. Students explored the woods while conducting a Bioblitz and line transect surveys. Additionally, they learned to use technology to ID the species around them. Their collected data contributed to a collaborative research project (SPARCnet) that utilizes 6 cover board research plots set up by ConVal students several years ago that biology classes have been able to continue to learn from.
See related story here.
