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Union Village Dam Exploration

By Faith Crowe

Students in the Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education course read a book called Reading the Forested Landscapes by Tom Wessels. This book is about the land we live in and what’s shaped the land. The book shows the reader how they can find clues in the forest that tell a story. 

As  a final assessment students went to Union Village Dam to find examples of things we read about in the book including, basal scars, stone walls, beaver stumps,  coppice trees, weevil trees and other forest clues. Using the book as a guide we each found three examples, then we wrote down observations of the examples and took pictures and GPS waypoints. When we got back to the classroom we created an interactive digital online map of all the examples using Google MyMaps. 

Click this link to take a look at the map we created.   

The reason for this assignment was to assess students on their comprehension of  Reading The Forested of Landscapes  by Tom Wessels. But in many ways it was more than just a test. I enjoyed being out of the classroom, exploring places I have not seen and finding clues in a forest that can tell a story about the history of a place.



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