Anna from New Mexico teaches 8th Grade STEM
“I would definitely recommend this curriculum. It is based here, not some place the kids haven’t seen before. It doesn’t just focus on one part of wildfires, but on everything. Fires are not just one thing.”
Mrs. Suggs has been teaching science for thirty years and was invited to trial our new Fire Education Learning Lab Curriculum. She ended up teaching approximately 90% of the lessons and when asked if she plans on teaching this curriculum unit again, she exclaimed, “Oh yes, it will be the first unit I teach, especially due to all of the wildfires that have been happening.”
Mrs. Suggs’ favorite lesson was on tree rings (Lesson 8). She explains, “I went a bit crazy. During Spring Break, I went to Colorado and the whole time I was picking up pieces of wood I would find on the ground trying to find samples that would work for class.” She felt that this lesson was particularly useful because when her students looked at different pieces of wood, she could ask, “What happened here?” or “How about here, what do you think these holes are from?” She thought that it was a cool, hands on way to teach her students not just about how tree rings can be used to learn the age of a tree, but to use them to think about how and where the tree grew.
When asked about which lesson or activity was her 8th Grade students’ favorite, Mrs. Suggs replied, “the students’ favorite activity was the burning. It [knowing we were going to get to light something on fire] was a motivating factor. They looked forward to it. We did a pre-activity, that was not in this curriculum, and this got them hooked. It demonstrated to them that are going to study fire and this is what fire is, and gave them a perspective on why flames aren’t always the same. Why the smoke is different and those kind of things.”