Waterfest 2003 Team
Front row, left to right: SMSU School of Education students Debi Coble, April Sneed, Jamie Walker-House, Cindy Norris. Back row, left to right: West Plains Middle School students: Candy, Mikel, Alicia, Tabitha, Tish, Jordan, Caitlin, Ryan. Behind them: the Crawdaddy!

Learning Activities about Water for Fifth Graders

Students seated at the table represent a river from the headwaters to the mouth. Look at all the trash in this river, working its way downstream!

500 fifth graders from 10 area elementary, middle and private schools converged on Southwest Missouri State University-West Plains on March 28 for Waterfest 2003. SMSU college students and West Plains Middle School students teamed up as presenters. Each of the four teams led groups of fifth graders through a hands-on demonstration of nonpoint source pollution.

With the guidance of the college students, the enthusiastic young people set up the demonstration and provided instruction. They found it very interesting to be the ones who were asking questions of the students!

All fifth grade classes in Howell County schools attended, including Cross Roads Christian Academy, Fair View, Glenwood, Heritage Baptist Christian School of West Plains, Howell Valley, Junction Hill, Richards, South Fork Elementary, West Plains Middle School and Willow Springs Middle School.

This day-long event provided area fifth graders with hands-on learning activities about the water cycle and how all aspects of that cycle, including people, are interconnected. The activities centered around climate and weather, surface water (river, streams and lakes), and ground water (caves and karst topography), three important aspects of the water cycle.

Students took part in a wide variety of projects, including sampling macroinvertebrates from a mock stream and calculating water quality based on what they found, as well as creating a model of karst topography in the Ozarks, using clay, sugar and waterguns!