Cartwright Elementary School, Phoenix, Arizona

We have 1200 K-6 students in our school. Our class is 3rd grade, ESL, which means that many students are learning English. Most of our families are from Mexico and speak Spanish. We have 28 students in our class, 13 girls and 15 boys. We have 7 computers in our class, 6 are connected to the internet. 

Our environment here is desert. The only ponds are man-made in parks or housing developments. Water is scarce and many people have rocks and cactus in their yards instead of grass. We found a place with a big pond and lots of wildlife.  It is called Tres Rios, which means three rivers in Spanish. Tres Rios is also a man-made pond. It is part of a wastewater treatment plant. This is where water and waste goes from your drains and toilets. The water is cleaned three times using chlorine, then it is run through the pond to get cleaner. The plants help clean the water. If you want to learn more about Tres Rios you can go to our project website at: http://www.geocities.com/swingkellyimplementation 

We went on a field trip to Tres Rios and Crystal showed us around. First we went to a big room and saw a video about how Tres Rios was made and what they want to happen in the future. Crystal gave us all a pin with the Tres Rios logo on it. Then we went on the bus to the pond. We walked around the giant ponds and saw lots of plants and animals. Some of the plants we saw were duckweed floating on the water, cattails, and castor bushes. Some of the plants were donated by the Phoenix Zoo. Some of the animals we saw were redwing blackbirds, lizards, egrets, fish, ducks, turtles, bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and ladybugs. Other animals that live there that we did not see were muskrats, bats and beaver. They come out at night. We collected 3
gallon buckets of pond water there. 
We looked at the water with our eyes, then with magnifying glasses, and finally with a microscope. We found: 

3 tadpoles 
3 damselfly nymphs 
1 damselfly (most student call them dragonflies) 
4 bloodworms 
6 snails 
8 water mites 
2 phantom midge larva 
3 water fleas 
1 bristle worm 
lots of rotifers 

Our Hypothesis: 

We believe that we will have different organisms in our water sample than the other classes because we have different environments.