Voyages of Rediscovery, as a program, lends itself to be adapted to fit any curriculum and area of study. Cultural and natural history, scientific inquiry, wildlife biology and language studies are just to name a few.
Our educational philosphy revolves around Inquiry. We encourage students to make observations and ask questions. On every educational expedition, each student is provided a river journal where they may take notes, draw plants or animals, and record their thoughts during and after the trip.
Through hands on paddle time, our goal is to mesh the romance of historical expeditionary travel and an environmental education curriculum suited to your educational needs.
- River Mile Ability to provide school groups with the most up-to-date water quality testing equipment available. Research tools like: YSI 556 water meter and probe, turbidity tubes, secchi discs, basic test strips, and chemical water tests for the advanced grades. These tools can then be done from shore or canoe at ones river mile stretch. “The River Mile Flyer” http://www.nps.gov/laro/forteachers/upload/The%20River%20Mile%20Flyer%2009-10.pdf
- Waterways Curriculum –A Middle School Intra-Disciplinary Curriculum focused on exploring the Ecology, Economy and Equity of the Lake Roosevelt Watershed (link); www.lsw.org/scd or www.lrf.org
- Riverworks Discovery Curriculum – Energy based activities for intermediate and secondary grade levels; www.riverworksdiscovery.org
- Project WET – A national Environmental Education curriculum focusing on water education for teachers, parents, and educators; www.projectwet.org
- Data collection and inventory worksheets provide the Park Service with essential information for further protection of America’s National Parks.
- Nature journaling provides the opportunity for students to reflect on the day’s events.
 |
| Click on this image for maps and trip descriptions of some of the educational expeditions we run on the Columbia River |
“The Columbia and its tributaries, reaching and snaking through canyons and around glaciered peaks in a thousand tortured courses, collect water from a quarter-million-square-mile basin, an area bigger than France. By the time it reaches the sea the river has gathered moisture from an atlas of geographical extremes, ranging from ice fields in the Canadian Rockies to American sagebrush desert. Its basin runs from the hamlet of Canoe River, halfway up British Columbia, to Tuscarora, Nevada. It extends from Astoria, near the Pacific coast of Oregon, to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Plateau and canyon, mountain and dune, rain forest and bunch-grass steppe: all contribute to the gathering waters. The Columbia has seven times the flow of the longer Colorado and two hundred times that of the even longer Rio Grande. Though half of the Columbia basin is desert, it gathers two and a half times as much water per square mile of its drainage area as does the mississippi-Missouri system. It is the biggest river in the American West, and the only major one to pierce the rampart of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevadas.”
Pg.45 William Dietrich’s, Northwest Passage, 1995.
