Mrs. Jackie Ruiz’s, Chemistry, fourth period environmental science class went outside on Tuesday, May 20, for the second time this year for their Plot Lab.  The lab identified different organisms that live in certain ecosystems around Lake Central.

“The main labs that we do [outside] are the Plot Lab, which we did today, and then we always do a sail and water analysis. They’re the two main labs we like to do,” Ruiz said.

The lab involved selecting an ecosystem from the school’s cross country course and sketching it in their composition notebooks.

“Going outside is always really fun. I learned a lot about what kind of organisms live in different ecosystems,” Kayla Radtke (10) said.

Mrs. Ruiz believes her students learn better if they learn outside with each other.

“I think [the students do better outside], they can actually see it.  It’s one thing to draw it on paper, but its another thing to see it and draw it. So they connect it.” Mrs. Ruiz said.

If allowed, Mrs. Ruiz would like to do a lot of outdoor labs for her future classes, going outside whenever possible with her students.

“It would be nice to do these labs and compare them with somewhere else, like the Indiana Dunes, to work with another site. That way they could see here, but compare somewhere else.  That’s hard to do with our schedule, but hopefully they’ll be changing,”  Mrs. Ruiz said.