USING A RAIN GARDEN TO TEACH HYDROGEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS IN A HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSROOM

In early 2020, volunteers supporting the Cooper Creek Collaborative (coopercreek.org) installed a rain garden at Deer Park High School (DPHS) in Hamilton County, Ohio. This initiated a collaborative effort to demonstrate use of green infrastructure to mitigate stormwater runoff to local sewer systems and provide an educational tool to teach students about hydrology, ecology, and how human activities can impact our local environment. In collaboration with DPHS, an eight-day unit was created to raise awareness of the local stormwater runoff issue, teach hydrogeological field skills, and provide an opportunity to collect and process unique data. The intended audience of the rain garden unit was physical science students; however, the unit was also modified and used in physics classes, thus proving the curriculum could be implemented in a variety of courses with appropriate modifications. DPHS was especially eager to offer hands-on experiences for students returning from a year of remote learning due to COVID-19. The rain garden unit began with classroom activities to introduce students to hydrology in an urban watershed. This was followed by the students being tasked with determining how much water the rain garden could capture and divert from nearby storm drains. The students formed teams and used metersticks and bubble levels to conduct an elevation survey for a reference grid established within the rain garden. The relative elevation data collected was then used to teach graphing skills and to construct 3D models to provide physical representations linked to their volume calculation estimates. Student data and volume estimates from the six classes were within 3-11% of volume estimates derived from traditional surveying measurements. This initial effort laid the foundation to develop additional physical science curriculum materials linked to the rain garden including teaching hydrogeologic skills such as analysis of staff gauge data, rain gauge data and soil percolation tests. Future efforts will include curriculum development to address concepts in biology and chemistry.