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IMPACT FISH Project with GPS |
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In accordance with the FISH Philosophy (based on the motto of Pike’s Place Fish Market in Seattle Washington-catch the energy and release the potential; work made fun gets done!) all student (500+) will participate in FISH activity whose objective is to match a fish name, description, and picture that they have to locate using the absolute locations of the data using Global Positional Systems (GPS).. This activity will combine the FISH philosophy with our local natural resource, fish, and the latitude and longitude location of the cache using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) with a one hour period of time (two teams, 4 cores, 3 days—with two rain days worked in). To begin with, you must have one GPS system to set 6 waypoints where the caches will be (two teams will be doing this at one time at BCMS so we will have 6 on one side of the building-baseball field and 6 on the other side of the building-softball field). To set the waypoints with a Garmin etrex device you must go outside and turn it on. You will see the screen tracking satellites which will indicate the latitude and longitude point that you are standing at. Once it does this, you may walk (you must be outside for this to work) to the places you wish to hide your item (cache). When you get to the spot you have chosen, write down the degrees and minutes of that spot that is at the bottom of the GPS screen (ex. N 43◦ 54.833). This information is what the students will have to put into the GPS system so that they will be able to locate the cache that you hide. The students will be in 12 groups of two or more students that have one GPS system (our county has a set of 25 that we can check out from a central location--they are split amongst the two teams so there is 12 to use per team). We are recycling plastic film containers as the caches to put our information in. Each spot will have 4 caches hidden with the clues inside it. Each student will be given a card (it is recommended that you laminate it for recycling purposes so it can be used again) that has the name of a fish (each of our middle school’s team are named after a fish---6 teams, 6 waypoints) and two waypoints on it. Students will pick up two pieces of paper (one white and one yellow) at each waypoint. On a white square of paper, the first waypoint will have either a picture of the fish or the 2nd way point will have a description of the fish (or vice versa). On the yellow piece of paper, there will be one word. When students correctly match the name of the fish with the picture of the fish, and the correct description students will bring it to the lead teacher of the project who will give them an orange card with a word on it. When the students get back to the classroom they will use the card they received to decode a 12 word riddle. The core (out of the four) that solves the riddle the fastest will receive a treat (hopefully this will encourage them from sharing it with the cores that haven’t done this yet!). The riddle is “BCMS' FISH Philosophy: Be there; Choose your Attitude; Play; Make Someone’s Day! The documents below were created by 6th grade science teacher, Sharon Baugus, who hit the ground running with this project and did an excellent job with working out the details. Check it out! For directions for this activity click the here. For the pictures and descriptions click here. For the waypoints coordinates click here. For the student waypoint card examples click here. For the needs of the caches click here.
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