Day 1: Orientation

Hancock's Group Report: 

  On February 26, 2014 we started a project for the park. The project we're doing is for the birds. Basically what we're doing is helping the park with what bird to get and help make the cage and signs. As soon as attendance was taken we went outside and looked at the birds and looked at the cages they were in. They were kind of small to me. Birds should have bigger cages.. like the ones the Eagles are in. We listened to one of the guys who are in charge of the park about what we need to learn about and what we need to do in order for all of this to work out. We will be doing this project on birds of prey. They are like hawks and owls. We got to see a few of them, like a turkey vulture and a barn owl. They gave us some ideas on the birds we can pick.

When we all went to the older aviary that isn't fun or interesting to really anyone, we decided to make a new one. Well the park and the school decided, but we still in the end agreed to as students at Peoria Regional High School. The idea of make a whole new one is so cool. We are getting birds that we want, maybe interactive signs, maybe we can help work in it since we made it (well will make it) during P.E.
We will be working on this project on Wednesday until the end of school, maybe some will come back to help in summer. This is only the beginning in this very long project. It will be so fun I think. We all do.
Obviously I was put into Hancock's group.. I'm super excited because knowing her we'll be having all these ideas, great ideas I should say. We walked around the cages to look at the owls, and the Eagles learning more about what they eat, and where they came from and ect. After all the talking  we went up to the Hesbell deck and got into our groups, got a map to the park and talked about some ideas people may have came up with, and asked questions like Do they have to be a certain size? and Do the cages have to be a certain size too.. We also took some notes and photos. It was a very fun and interesting day!
When the day was over, we all went back to the school for a few minutes, we were all excited to hear that we will be doing this project. LET'S GET READY PEOPLE! We all need to be pumped. Let's see if Hancock's group will get picked for the park! We have good ideas! Let's just pull through it!
 




Chumbley's Group Report: 
 
Today we were asked to do a project by the park to design and put birds in some cages, they put us into groups and we discussed plans for having birds of prey on display. He went over good places to research information about birds of prey and also learned some information first hand. They also showed us a couple example birds of prey to give us the idea of what were working with.
-Barred Owl
The first species we looked at was the barred owl. We learned a lot about what type of enclosures this species likes, what type of diet it has, also we learned a little bit about their behavior.

     

-Turkey Vulture 
Another raptor we looked at was the turkey vulture who surprisingly isn't really a bird of prey. This species is actually a scavenger. We learned a lot about enclosures, behavior, and food preferences. We also learned its funny but nasty defense mechanism, which is puking on its predators...



        


 
-Barn Owl



The final bird we saw was the classic barn owl. As i said before we learned a lot about its behavior and what type of enclosure this species prefers. Like most owls this owl is strictly nocturnal and inhabits quiet spaces like barns or what not during the day. 

  



All in all it was a great experience and our group is excited to try and make this aviary project exciting.



Gianessi's Group Report: 

The first thing that happened was that they took the entire school during P.E. to the Aviary and we discussed what was "in" the bird cages where it was pretty cold out and some people didn't really like the fact that they were standing in snow. Then we went to Forest Hall and we learned about different kinds of bird of, such as the Turkey Vulture, Barn Owl, and the Spotted Owl. My favorite was the Barn Owl, Austin liked both owls because they were very curious about the people in the room. I also saw that their was a black rabbit in the corner of the room and he was very cute.

We then went to the Hespell Deck where we got into groups and discussed what the project was actually about. There we had some group members freaking out about what we had to do and others didn't really care what was going on. So the first thing we discussed was how we could change the look of the layout which we later figured out there was not much room for improvement.

I believe that the project will be enjoyable and fun. 


Koss' Group Report: 

Today, our whole school met together and a new project was presented to us. The idea of the project is to pick out new birds, and make the aviary look nicer. Between the whole school, we are split in six different groups and the leaders are Mrs. Gianessi, Mr.Chumbley, Mr. Czarnik, Ms. Hancock, Mrs. Koss, and Mrs. Pointer. Each group is supposed to pick out six unique birds that will fit the Midwest states.

The students will be assigned different roles and they are: project manager, group historian, researcher, design team member, bird enclosure team member, and signage team member. Each week we have to fulfill a certain thing, and get so much information covered. We also have two people in each group that are from the publication classes that have to take photos, and write blogs about each of our meetings. Mrs. Koss split us up in different groups. Signs are Ethan, Savanna, Josh, and Desiree. Habitat is Blake and Emily. Landscape is Aj, Emily, and Mary. Project managers are Marriah and Ethan.Organizer is Josie. Recorder/ Note taker is Emily. And the publications group is Emily and Mary.  



Czarnik's Group Report: 
 
On February 26, 2014, Peoria Regional High School overtook a project for Wildlife Prairie State Park. The project is to create a "Birds of prey" enclosure. This means research, this means design, this means everything possible to make it happen. Both of us were absent on the first day, so we didn't get the full run through like everyone else. I was introduced to the birds, and had to go. We all gathered on the Hespell deck as everyone was gathered into groups, our teachers are the leaders.

Mrs. Gianessi, Mr. Chumbley, Mr. Czarnik, Ms. Hancock, Mrs. Koss, Mrs. Pointer all were in charge to point us in the right way to our research. We're going to pick out different birds of prey that the park can display in their aviary. There are going to be different roles in the student body within each of the groups. The roles are project manager, group historian, a researcher. Every week we are going to be introduced to a new area of our project. We have a lot of information to cover and hopefully there's enough time to do it. In our publications class, we have two people squeezed into every group. We're all going to take pictures, and write more blog posts about all of our meetings.  

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.