Indiana School students study wetlands

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

For the past four years, students at Matteson School District 162’s Indiana School in Park Forest have visited the Central Park wetlands to learn about its ecosystem and to further the restoration efforts of the 45-acre site.

Indiana teacher Amanda Godin’s gifted fourth-graders were the first students to be involved in the wetlands project. They began studying the area and the flora and fauna it supports. The students then restored a kiosk in the wetland that they filled with information they developed that could be shared with other visitors.

The school’s fourth- through sixth-grade honors classes visit the wetland for science studies and experiments so that they can observe how it changes from year to year.

With the beginning of the fifth year of the wetland project, Indiana’s fourth-grade gifted class made glaciers based on their observations at the wetlands. During another visit, the students used handheld GPS units to locate the latitude and longitude of bluebird boxes in the wetland. Jan McCoy’s fifth-grade honors students mulched a new plant area.

Cheryl Rasmussen’s sixth-graders are creating a brochure for the development of a rain garden in the wetland, which they will present to the Park Forest Village Board. The students have learned the requirements for a rain garden and the type of plants that would thrive in that environment.

Emily Kenny and Michelle O’Connor, coordinators of Multi-disciplinary Education for the Environment, visited the students in their classroom to discuss how the wetland is helping Park Forest and surrounding communities.