The IISD summer environmental course is a unique opportunity for the students to observe different ecosystems as they camp in different sites during a two week study. This is a high school accredited fourth year science class. We spend 160 class / travel hours with a total of13 students. Our destination is Niagara Falls, NY with stops in Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas.

The course has each student rotating jobs where they do a water and soil study, the weather, and the GPS location at each site. The students will also identify trees, wildflowers, a rock, mineral or fossil and a vertebrate at each site. The students are asked to compare/contrast the ecosystems with Irving, Texas. The great opportunity with “Take a Dip” was that we are able to see other students’ data at different locations. It will only enhanced what we were already trying to do!!

On April 20, 2002, the IISD’s Summer Environmental Class had a special meeting at the banks of Delaware Creek. General observations were made of the general appearance of the creek. 6 aluminum cans were spotted with Burger King’s cups, plastic wrap, some pieces of paper trash and a Kroger’s shopping cart. There was dried mud found on the steps leading down to the creek showing how flooding had occurred recently. There was a hummingbird and a dragonfly flying overhead. There wasn’t any odor; the water is clear where it met the shoreline; and it appeared dark because the bottom was dirt over concrete.

The students remarked how the tests were easy to do/record, how they had never heard that water had hardness(our water was 7 grains per gallon, 120 ppm), nor did they make the connection of pH which we did in 8th grade class with water pH for this water quality project.

Some of our problems with our sampling area is that this creek runs through Irving, some has concrete sides/bottom, some is natural. It is encouraged that we not go to the water level of this creek due to accidents that have occurred in the past We probably would have been more successful with our macroinvertebrates survey at another part of the creek. It was not rocky here and even though we did it a shallow depth, it was not running over rocks. By doing this study, my students are excited about doing these reports on the road. We will email our road results even though it will be after the deadline.