X-Ed Fair a hit with students

News — 06 December 2011

By Ally Dunham

New Prospect School held their first Experiential Education (X-Ed) Fair at the Agricultural Society on Wed., Nov. 30. Grades 6, 7 and 8 students travelled to the Ag Centre to participate in different hands-on presentations hosted by local experts in their chosen fields.

“This gets the students in touch with things that may be career oriented or recreation oriented, just different, interesting things and broadens their horizons,” said organizer and teacher, Marcel Aresenault.

Included in the fair was the Northwestern Health Unit, and Saralynn Semeniuk said the kids were involved in making scrapbook pages expressing what is important to them in their life, as well as a drunk driving simulation.

The students put on vision impairment goggles, and demonstrate their ability to function if under the influence of substance. The exercise was also designed to remind the students of the people around them who could be under the influence as well, and to be cautious of the activities they do with those people, such as getting in a car with a drunk driver.

New Prospect students check out a wolf fur brought in by the Dryden Trappers Council at the X-Ed Fair on November 30. Photo by Ally Dunham

The Dryden and District Museum focused their presentations on communication, past and present, from hieroglyphics and Morse code to today’s technology including texting and cell phones.

“In the past, communication was done visually, through hieroglyphics, petroglyphs and pictographs. Then when they saw a need to communicate a further distance, we had the invention of Morse code, telegraphs and the telephone, how we used to actually write letters and put them in the mail, how they communicated in the war using signals and semaphore flags,” said Leah Gardner, curator of the museum.

The Cloverbelt Farmers Market representatives taught the students about local foods, how much of the earth can actually be used to grow food, and where foods are grown and packed. Students had to read labels to find out how far foods actually travel to get to our table.

Byron Sherrard taught the students about vermicomposting. The students learned how to sort the worms in the old bedding, so they can be recycled into new bedding, and how worm castings can help gardeners.

Bill Laidlaw taught the students how to learn the affects of weather on the forest, specifically, how the weather dries and moistens the fine fuels in the forest on a day-to-day basis.

Students were given historical records of temperature, humidity, wind speed and rainfall for Dryden from last summer and they were to calculate the fine fuel moisture code on a daily basis.

The Dryden Trappers Council presented many different varieties of furs, skulls and traps to students, offering descriptions of each, and showing how the traps are used.

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