Fifth graders in Stansbury Park turn flooding into hands-on science lesson

STANSBURY PARK — When a massive rainstorm flooded Tooele County this past weekend, most people were focused on cleanup and damage assessments. But in one Stansbury Park classroom, all that water led to a unique learning opportunity.

“When I teach science, we have to attach it (to) real-life situations,” said Ketelyn Chaves, a fifth-grade teacher at Rose Springs Elementary School.

The first thing you might notice when you enter her classroom is that she and her students do all their lessons in Portuguese. It’s part of a dual-immersion program these students have been in since first grade.

However, the focus this week isn’t on language; it’s on science.

“Everything around us is science. Every time you look at something, there’s a scientific explanation for why,” Chaves said.

Chaves saw a chance to make her lessons about weather, rain and erosion more tangible when the flooding hit.

“When I saw it, I had this moment that I thought, ‘Okay, my students are living what I’m teaching,'” she said.

She asked neighbors on a local Facebook page to send pictures of the storm’s impact.

Chaves was hoping for a handful of examples. Instead, she ended up with about 500.

“I thought that I was going to be canceled because this is not a fun situation for most people. But when I told them why I was asking them, I saw a good reaction,” Chaves said.

Tuesday morning, during one of their lessons, Chaves showed students photos of their own streets and neighborhoods, allowing them to see erosion and flood impacts firsthand.

The project also inspired hands-on learning, where students built a model neighborhood out of Play-Doh to come up with ideas for flood prevention.

“I liked it because it showed us how erosion could actually happen in the real world,” said Cooper Stapleton, a fifth grader.

“I like it because it happened at our house and it tells us more about our neighborhoods instead of some other place,” added classmate Zolah Touli.

For Principal Kelly Hranicky, it’s exactly what great teaching looks like.

“You can see it in the way that her students are actively engaged,” Hranicky said. “Her students love her, and she is an example of all of our teachers going above and beyond.”

In Chaves’ Portuguese classroom, science isn’t just another subject. It’s a lesson students are likely to remember, not from a textbook, but from their own backyards.

“Science is fun,” Chaves said. “And it is fun when we make it fun.”

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