Thursday - Geocaching, Math, and Rides

Today is shaping up to be a fun day. We have our third guest speaker coming in the afternoon and the weather is beautiful out. Check out what we're doing below!

8:15am - We did our ABCs of bike safety before heading out for a short morning ride to find some of the geocaches that last year's class hid. You can find all our planet caches on geocaching.com here. We found Jupiter and Mars!

Finding the Jupiter geocache

Finding Mars... at Mound Laser

10:00am - Peggy Kelly, former DRSS math teacher and WSU Developmental Mathematics Director (and Maddy's mom!) came to teach an inquiry-based lesson on how to calculate the gear ratios of their bikes. If you're interested in doing this on your own or in your own classroom, her lesson plans can be found here. Thanks so much for coming Peggy!

Mrs. Kelly explains how to collect the data for the lesson

Students collecting data

More data

...and more data

A little bit more data collection

Students had to ride outside at each gear combination to see how each one felt

Get out the graphing calculators!

According to my calculations...

Linear relationship on the graphing calculator

1:15pm - Leave the school and head over for an afternoon at the park. 

1:25pm - On our way to Delco Park we put our new bike maintenance skills to the test when Evan popped a tire on County Line Road. The students patched it in under 5 minutes!

Changing Evan's tire

1:38pm - We arrived at Delco Park and students took turns on the BMX track!

Coming up ramp #1

 

Ray gets some air - check out this YouTube video to see what it's like to go around this track!

2:58pm - Back at school with 17 minutes to spare! Everyone is a little bit tired, but great end to a great day. Tomorrow - Carillon Park!

Exhausted is a good way to describe how we feel now. Tired, but good.

Things We Did/Learned Today

Today and yesterday were busy days!

Yesterday we had a bike safety talk from John Chester of the Cincinnati Cycle Club. He talked with the kids and then helped us set up and run our maneuverability test to test the students' skills. Thanks so much to John for coming out for the second year in a row!

John Chester of the Cincinnati Cycle Club talking to the kids about safety

John teaches the right way to wear a helmet

Students practicing maneuverability in the parking lot on Tuesday

Here's what happened today:

8:15 - Students worked all morning on figuring out where they wanted to go and starting their blog posts as they planned their trips. Posts will be put online after we take them so others can see what we did that day.

10:00 - Brian Whitten from K&G Bike Center came and spoke to the kids about bike maintenance and how to change tires (among other lessons). Brian fixed probably 7 or 8 different bikes while he was visiting. Thanks so much Brian!

Brian Whitten of K&G Bike Center

Ray learns how to change a tire tube

10:15 - We rode Trail 9 up to Linden Ave, but had to turn back around due to construction on 35, so we circled back and rode up County Line and back to the school and had lunch.

1:00 - We left again and this time went up Spaulding Road to get onto Creekside Trail, which we took all the way to Airway Road for an 11+ mile round trip. All in all we probably rode around 15-17 miles today!

Picture from the bridge on Creekside Trail heading towards Linden

Below, please post an insightful comment about something you learned relating to biking, bike safety, bike maintenance, or something relevant to the course. Please put your name on your comment!

Wright Brothers Memorial Trip

Trip Theme -  Local History

Trip Overview/Things to do

This trip is an exciting and challenging one filled with a lot of local history, sights, and things to do. We rated the trip as a 3/4 in terms of overall difficulty, mostly due to steep inclines and the total distance of the ride.

There are lots of things to do and many options along this trip. We chose to ride to the scenic Huffman MetroPark for a nice picnic. Some of the kids rode on to MoMBA, the MetroParks Mountain Biking Area, where you can do some off-road biking. There are some great courses to ride on there, but it's definitely not for the faint of heart! One tip: If you go to MoMBA, be sure to call ahead and make sure they're open on the day you plan to be there.

The mountain-biking crew after a few scrapes/bruises. Remember: ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET!

From there, we backtracked and went to the Wright Brothers Memorial, which overlooks Huffman prairie, which (according to the National Park Service), is where the Wright Brothers "learned to control and maneuver their powered machine and taught themselves to fly during 1904 and 1905." After this we visited the museum and were very happy to be able to sit and watch (in the air-conditioned theater) the movie "On Great White Wings," narrated by fellow Daytonian Martin Sheen. If you're interested in going to visit, check to see when the museum is open and when the movie is playing before you go at the Wright Brothers National Memorial website.

2013 STEMmersion class in front of the Wright Brothers Memorial overlooking Huffman Prairie

Directions

Leaving DRSS, we took the Ironhorse Trail(9) to Creekside Trail (2), then in Eastwood Park picked up Mad River Trail (8) and went East to Huffman Metro Park. After lunch/mountain biking, we backtracked to Wright Brothers Memorial. This was a 25-mile ride from school to the Memorial and back. Click here for the Google Maps directions.

Our trip route from Google Maps - click here for these directions

Most Memorable Experience

One of the most memorable things from the trip was the group of students who thought they would attempt to "live off the land" for their lunch and consumed what appeared to be a tasty root. Turns out they ate hemlock, a poisonous plant in the carrot family! Another safety tip: always have the number for poison control handy!

Sources Cited

National Park Service. Dayton Aviation Heritage: Visit the sites. Retrieved from http://www.nps.gov/daav/planyourvisit/facilitysites.htm