Dayton Avenue’s fifth graders
spent the afternoon among polar bears on one of the coldest places on the
planet—Churchill, Manitoba in Canada. Visitors can only get to Churchill
by plane or train, as there are no roads into the town. However, our students
lucked out and traveled to Churchill virtually. No luggage required!
Students entered the Library
Media Center at 2:30 pm with their plane tickets to Cananda in hand and headed
straight into the video conferencing area for the next hour with Mrs. Marone
and Mrs. Zambelli. Through the Mondopad, the students connected with a live
expert panel broadcasting from the tundra! Classrooms from around the world
connected to the event made up of a science coordinator from the Churchill
Northern Studies Center working in Arctic science, the principal of the school
in Churchill as well as a few teachers and employees of the parks and conservation.
During the live-streaming event,
the panel answered the questions fifth grade teachers Mrs. Lukas and Mrs.
Chiavola brainstormed in the classroom with their students. The panel also
answered questions Mrs. Marone typed into the live chat as Dayton streamed the
video. Students from Dayton asked about the wildlife in Churchill to the power
outages to the culture on why someone would want to live on the tundra. One
student even wanted to know if a polar bear ever got into the school!
Students learned that before
trick-or-treating on Halloween in Churchill, a helicopter scouts the area to
look for polar bears in the community as well as patrol vehicles. The town has
a polar bear alert line and almost everyone has had an encounter with a polar
bear at some point or another. While construction was happening on a part of
the school, the principal shared that a polar bear went inside! He even shared
how he encountered polar bears while snowmobiling and saw them jump over a
fence! Another expert on the panel said he faced a polar bear that was over
1200 pounds who was about 15 years old. Additionally, one teacher shared she
saw a mother and cub together only two car lengths away the day before the
live-stream.
Other attractions in Churchill
are dogsledding, diving with beluga whales and seeing the Northern Lights. The
Northern Lights appear about 300 days out of the year, but can only be seen
clearly when there is little moisture in the air. Winter is the best time for
viewing the lights the science coordinator shared!
However during the winter, some
of the town has to drive snow machines around to get from place-to-place as the
temperature can be -45 degrees Fahrenheit as well as being very windy. However,
it can get warm up to almost 30 degrees Fahrenheit on hot, summer days.
Aside from weather, other
animals and wildlife in Churchill include wolves, various types of owls, and
even killer whales! The new appearance of killer whales or orcas are being
tracked in the Hudson Bay to find out more information such as the impact of
that large of a predator.
For more information and to view
the recorded videos from the live sessions, visit the site below: http://new.livestream.com/fsd/churchill.
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