Gunston Sixth Graders Leave Their Mark

Pat McNeely and Vicky Woodbury's sixth graders undertook several Earth Force endeavors during the course of the 2005-2006 school year. Below is a description of their activities from two Earth Force students:

"This year in Earth Force we did many things. We drew posters that asked people not to litter. We went to Bluemont Park two times. There, we saw different sea creatures who determined if our water was clean or not. The second time, we went to the Earth Force Youth Summit. There were different stations teaching us about our watershed, nature, and science. Everything we did involving Earth Force was fun.

An environmental struggle we researched was pollution in the water. We were trying to solve this problem by putting posters up sending a message to people not to litter. One guest speaker that came to our school was a person who worked for Earth Force. Her name was Jen McDonnell. We also had presentations by Elenor Hodges of Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment, and Aileen Winquist of the Arlington County Environmental Planning Department. All of them inspired me. They taught us the importance of saving the earth. I made a poster to inspire people to help the environment. It explained how things can harm our oceans, rivers, and lakes. Earth Force is a great program helping to save our earth. Thank you Earth Force."

"We did two things to help the environment. We decided to make a public service announcement (psa) for our in-school television transmission, called “Good Morning Gunston” and we marked storm drains on our school property.

First for the psa, we thought of rhyming words and made a “rap”. We decided on the scene for the psa. We memorized our lines. We filmed it outside on the soccer field and inside in the school’s studio. Our message was, “C’mon man, just throw it in the can.” We were promoting recycling rather than littering on school property.

We marked the storm drains in the Gunston parking lot. Aileen Winquist of the Arlington County Environmental Planning Department gave us a kit with environmental storm drain decals, special glue, and a permit to mark the stormdrains. Each person was able to mark at least one storm drain. We wanted others to know that litter can go into the storm drain which goes into Four Mile Run, which goes into the Potomac River, and then to the Chesapeake Bay, and finally the Atlantic Ocean."

Excellent job, Gunston!