FWWA Offers Watershed Education in Schools throughout Northeast Wisconsin

The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance provides watershed education to schools throughout northeast Wisconsin. Schools that are within Northeast Wisconsin Stormwater Consortium (NEWSC) member communities qualify for presentations, curriculum, & activities offered for FREE to teachers! During a 60-90-minute presentation, students learn about the following topics through discussion and hands-on activities:

• Why water quality matters
• What is a watershed
• The importance of the Great Lakes and our local waterways
• Water Conservation
• How urban storm water runoff influences our rivers and lakes
• Green infrastructure and what is being done to deal with the quality and quantity of stormwater runoff
• Actions students can take at home to make a difference
• and volunteer opportunities

Every fall, a brochure is sent out to the over 270 public and private schools throughout the region discussing the opportunity for these free watershed lessons in their classrooms. Presentations are scheduled throughout the year, and we travel around meeting new students and spreading awareness about the issues affecting our lakes and rivers. Our presentations generally offer a slideshow and discussion of the aforementioned topics that is followed by use of the Envioroscape Watershed Model, which offers students a hands-on opportunity to see these topics in action.

In 2018, we presented to 1,811 students from schools in Appleton, De Pere, Green Bay, Greenville, Kaukauna, Oshkosh, Manitowoc, Menasha, Outagamie County, and Winnebago County. These presentations occurred in regular classrooms along with events at the Boys and Girls Club,  AAUW Tech Saavy Days, Vacation Bible School summer classes, Outagamie County Field Days, and Winnebago County Field Days. Working with the teachers in De Pere, we were able to present to all of the 6th graders in the City of De Pere, over 340 students! Looking ahead to 2019, there are already a few presentations scheduled in Appleton and De Pere, and we are excited to have new teaching tools to work with. Through generous support from the City of Appleton, we have recently acquired a Plinko game and have ordered a floodplain model as well. The Plinko game has already been used in a classroom in Green Bay, and offers a fun way for students to use what they learned in our presentation. The Plinko game has students dropping round chips–representing water droplets containing pollution–and seeing where they end up, in a lake or river or a stormwater pond, for example. The students play the game until there is a winner.  The winning student has kept their water droplet out of our lakes, rivers, and storm drains. The Ward’s Floodplain Model teaches students about the importance of considering floodplains when cities develop, and shows them how stormwater ponds and wetlands function in the watershed and slow down, and hold on to, excess water running off of the landscape. Check out this video below that shows how the model works. We’re looking forward to another great year of educating the youth in this region!