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I can not imagine any student sitting passively in a class taught by Judith Odom. She is a spectacular teacher; creative, energetic, resourseful, and powerful.

The opening exercise, designed to have all organisms die, was a concrete introduction to the interconnectedness of living things and fun. It was an active learning experience.

Her unit on building a watershed was the kind of tactile experience that allowed discovery, experimentation, and learning on many levels. The building up of the land was fun. Creating a surface with foil hid the base but allow the students to feel the topography formed by the underlying mass. Concentrating on the sense of touch, students could predict the flow of water down the slope formed by the land mass. Using pens to draw the flow of water commited the student to his/her prediction. Testing with sprays of water, to represent rain, supported or did not support the prediction, so the feedback was immediate. Judith then allowed the students to extend their knowledge by adding new variables such as using sprinkles of different colors to mark locations of pollutors like farms or factories. The spraying of more water showed the effect of the location of the pollutors on the bodies of water already formed. The addition of food coloring to the spray bottle allowed students to explore the effect of polluted rain (acid rain). This inquiry based exploration is amazingly open ended.

Thanks Judith!!