A Classroom Study on the Management of the Pacific
Northwest Tree Octopus
...from
hoax to educational opportunity
GK-12:
A National Science Foundation Funded Endeavor
to Support Education from Kindergarten to
College
The Graduate STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Fellows in K-12
Education (GK-12) is a National Science Foundation program
that places graduate students specializing in STEM fields
into K-12 classrooms. The objectives of the program are to
improve teaching and communication skills for graduate
students and to enrich the STEM content taught in the
classroom. Tyler Hicks, a Master's student at
WSU-Vancouver, is partnering with 7th grade life science
teacher Ms. Mueller at Liberty Middle School in Camas,
Washington as part of this program. His research interests
are in natural resource management, namely wildlife, and he
is incorporating his research into the classroom through
presentations and discussion, hands-on-experimentation, and
quantitative modeling. Working together Ms. Mueller and
Tyler developed a lesson plan revolving around the
management of fictional forest reserve for the fictional
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.
Basic Outline of Methods
This lesson revolved around the management of a fictional
forest reserve on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula
for the fictional Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Students
worked to balance wildlife management decisions on the
forest reserve such as hunting and habitat management needs
with needs people such as logging and recreation. Each
class was divided up into one decision maker group and four
stakeholder groups including: a recreation, a hunting, a
logging, and a conservation group. First, each stakeholder
group had the opportunity to make decisions on managing the
forest reserve and to see the effects of those decisions on
the tree octopus population, public perception, and
financial cost. Next stakeholders made recommendations to
the decision making group on how to manage the forest
reserve. Decision makers then developed a final management
plan for the forest reserve. Afterwards stakeholders had
the opportunity to respond to the final decisions made by
the decision maker group to express their satisfaction or
dissatisfaction with the final management plan.
Student Generated Best Management Plans
Click Here to See an Example of A
Best Management Plan for the Tree Octopus Forest
Reserve Developed by Students
Creativity
in
the
Context
of
Science
Student Pacific Northwest
Octopus Art: Stakeholder Buttons and Conservation Posters
Each student created their own buttons representing their
stakeholder groups.
Click here or on the above picture to see more button
artwork.
Click here or on the octopus art
above to see additional octopus art by students.
Did you find a tree
octopus <<<<<<<<Teachers
would you like
in a geocache?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>to
know more?
Click on the corresponding octopus below
to learn more.
hjkhkjjhkjhkjh 
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For More Information on the GK-12 Program "Partners
in Discovery" at WSU-Vancouver and Nationwide Click on the
Icons Below
