A ‘Grand’ adventure
75 Rancho Viejo students experience state’s natural wonder BY AMY CRAWFORD SUN STAFF WRITER
Snow. Sleet. Hail. Rainstorm.
Not your typical desert weather, but 75 students from Rancho Viejo Elementary School didn’t experience that kind of precipitation variety in Yuma — they were camping in it at the Grand Canyon.
“We camped overnight in GCNP (and experienced a rainstorm, hail, sleet, and snow, and a low temperature of 27 degrees),” said Rancho Viejo Elementary School Gowan Achievement Program science teacher Vicki Peterson.
The May trip was a culmination of months of study of the Canyon, Peterson said, and financed through a STEM mini-grant from the Arizona Public Service Foundation/Phoenix Suns, a travel grant from the Grand Canyon Association, the Gowan Company (the Gowan Achievement Program sponsors), and some supplemental fundraising by the students and teachers.
In March, Grand Canyon National Park Ranger Kaitlin Pitts visited the school, giving students information about the national parks and teaching individual classes on ecology. Pitts also did a
presentation to a schoolwide assembly about endangered species such as the California condor and efforts to protect the rare bird at the park. Students also studied fossils and ecosystems with the ranger.
During the months leading up to the trip, Peterson touched on how weathering, erosion, and deposition processes formed the Grand Canyon. Students also “learned about how fossils show evidence of life and the environment in the past, and applied that to Grand Canyon with study of the fossils found there,” Peterson said.
Also at the park, students got a first-hand look at the things they had learned in the classroom, Peterson said and Pitts was on hand to give students who got to go on the trip information on animals at the canyon.
“They learned to identify animal skulls by their features,” Peterson said.
Students investigated how elevation and latitude affect climate, and compared Yuma’s elevation and latitude to Grand Canyon’s South Rim to explain the differences in precipitation and temperature in the two places, Peterson said.
“We explored on our own and saw lots of elk, which they loved,” she said of her students. “Then each class had a ‘Grand Canyon Rocks!’ ranger class about rocks and layers in Grand Canyon. Students also learned more about the formation and history of the canyon and geologic time.”
On the way up to the Canyon, students and chaperones stopped in at Northern Arizona University-Flagstaff for a college visit. On the return trip, they toured Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott where they got to spend the night in the dormitories.
“The kids had an amazing experience!” the fourth, fifth- and sixthgrade science teacher said. “They loved the canyon, and the things they saw and learned. They loved the college visits. It was a fun trip that they will never forget!”