Tom McCall Upper Elementary, Forest Grove, Oregon

Each of 6 student groups from Tom McCall Upper Elementary ( Forest Grove, Oregon) prepared their own reports. Our school is divided into teaching teams named by the Continents. We are the Australia Continent, hence the Australian animal group names.

Final Report from the Kangaroo Group

An acre of forested land, filled with wildlife, vegetation... And discovery! Welcome to the Tom Mc Call Forest!

For the kangaroo group, (Jeremy, Taran, Janeli and Gabi) square in the square of life project we chose a meter by meter square in-between an overgrown, weedy meadow and a canopy of pines with a duff floor. Some of the things we observed were bumblebees, mosquitoes, wasps, mushrooms and signs of rodents, even though they were not in our particular square, we found rat or mouse bones. We also know that birds and squirrels live here. We were in a forest of many trees so it provided us with sticks, leaves and
duff
The school we chose to compare our results to, Byam School was in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, on the east coast in the U.S.A. They had their squares in a courtyard. Inside of their areas they had big rocks, metal and sand. Sadly, they had a variety of garbage. Some insects were ticks, grubs, caterpillars, centipedes, millipedes, and daddy long legs and even though our forest has them, we found no slugs but they did.

Some interesting similarities of things we had in common were we both sighted ants, beetles, flying insects, worms and pill bugs. Their group and ours had bushes, grass, trees, weeds and a few types of flowers. Of course, we both had dirt, along with mud and small rocks. It was kind of disappointing we both had garbage, including candy wrappers, paper, plastic and glass bottles.
The kangaroo group had a fabulous learning experience and fun, too! We hope you learn something and understand how different locations can have similarities and differences.
 

Square of Life- Platypus group

Nick, Aaron, Abbie, and Forrest. The Platypus group, choose the great school in Taipei, Taiwan. Cambridge Bilingual Primary School.
We found that the schools do not have much in common, but a lot of differences. Lets start with the similarities. Both Tom McCall [Platypus Group] and Cambridge have very little things in common like we saw several ants, ladybugs, different kinds of flying
bugs, spiders, and worms in the animal section. In the living section we only saw grass. In the non-living section we both saw dirt, mud, plastic, and small rocks.
The things Tom McCall forest have different is quite a long list. We found ten potato bugs, two fuzzy bumblebees, and five beetles. We saw mosquitoes and a red wasp. We also have a load of trees in our forest, butCambridge was in a field. We have our state flower and they don't from what we read. Last, we have bushes, mushrooms, trees, and weeds. Can you
believe all the things we don't have in common? The Cambridge Bilingual School had the most differences. They found some frogs and tadpoles. Which means they must have a small pond around somewhere. We didn't even have a little puddle around all we have is some neighbors turkeys off in the distance. Last, they had broken balloons, gypsum [whatever that is], and half a piece moldy bread [how gross!]. The platypus group had a blast and hopefully you understood everything we have wonderfully discovered.
 

Echidna student group
Hi We're the echidna group, Natasha, Karina, Clerance, Justin, and Skyler. We chose Roosevelt Middle School in West Orange, New Jersey. Their teacher's name is Mrs. Keigwin. Our group has a lot in common with Roosevelt Middle School and less differences. For example, both schools have about 900 students and each school was named after famous people. We both have special classes, such as Spanish, computers, and life skills. In addition, both of our groups found ants, pill bugs, grass, weeds, bushes, soil, and small rocks. Plus, we are 6th graders. We also have differences. Our school is for 5th -6th grades and we don't have a technical education class. In our forest, we found beetles, flying bugs, spiders, and worms. And, we can't forget mushrooms and trees. Roosevelt Middle School has 6th-8th grade and the students have a technical education class. So you see that we have a lot of common. Thanks for reading our
Info!
 

SQUARE OF LIFE- Koala Student Group

Tyler, Pato, Cecelia, and Danielle's group "the Koalas'' chose a school in Miami Florida named LakeView Elementary. The things that
we have in common are ants, flying bugs, spiders, bushes, grass, trees, weeds, dirt, small rocks and mud. And the thing that we don't have in common is they have snails, lizards, sand, and metal. Tom McCall's differences are we had mushrooms, beetles, worms, paper,
plastic, and bones. We had a lot of fun.
 

Square of Life-Cuscus Student Group
Jessa, Jeff, Anthony, Sydney, and Cody chose an interesting school called Cambridge Bilingual Primary School.
* Animals: The things that we found that were the same were ants, beetles, flying bugs, spiders and worms in the animal group. The thing that the class in Taiwan found that we didn't was a frog.
* Plants: The things that the group in Taiwan found was grass. We found grass, a bush, a mushroom (fungus), tree and weed.
* Non-Living: In "non-living" both groups found dirt, mud, plastic and small rocks. The thing that the other group found that our group didn't was sand. The thing that we found was paper, which they didn't.
 

Square of Life- Frilled Neck Lizards

Matt, Cory, Tyson, and Brian: this is the Frilled Neck Lizards group. We chose to compare the Kiu Saw primary school to us. Tom McCall and Kiu Saw Schools had a lot of differences and similarities, for instance similarities like 2 Bumble Bees, ants and flying bugs. For the living section the schools found grass and weeds. For the non-living we both found mud, plastic, dirt, paper and small rocks. Things we found different in the Tom McCall forest were things like slugs, worms, spiders, and other kinds of insects. We also
found a bush, mushrooms, trees, and Oregon's State flower the Oregon Grape. In Kiu Saw they had snails, [we have very little of those] butterflies, and other living bugs. In the living section they found things like moss. In the non-living part Kiu Saw found candy wrappers, a bird feather, and a big rock. I sure hope you learned something from this.

Tasmanian Devil Group

The Tasmanian Devil Group was very surprised when we found out how much our group at Tom McCall Upper Elementary School has so much in common with Pine Villa Elementary. We found things such as soil (or Dirt), nuts and nut shells. We also found that we had many green plants in common such as trees with green leaves, weeds and green grass, and we found out that many of our animals were the same too. We found animals like Ants, worms, beetles, pill bugs (or potato bugs). The differences of our school's forest were that we
had duff filled with pine and fir needles, soil that had a lot of clay, mostly evergreen trees (trees with needles) and not much trash or litter. The differences of Pine Villa Elementary were they had rocky soil and lots of trees with green leaves.

On this web page, http://education.ed.pacificu.edu/squareoflife/index.html, you will see pictures of our class conducting the square investigations.  We have also posted sketches of some of the things that we found.