STEM Learning on the Leven
By Jo Girvan
Forth Rivers Trust were invited to run a STEM River Workshop on the 15th of July at the River Leven. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and STEM sessions are intended to encourage students to get interested in these subjects. A group of 12 students, their teacher and teaching assistants attended from Levenmouth Academy.
We used our River Table to explain how rivers and their features are formed. The River Table allows water to flow through sand, forming channels, meanders and ox bow lakes. By turning the water velocity up to full, we can see how floods form. In particular, we can also see how man made engineering structures in the channel can fail and cause a lot of erosion. One particular demonstration enables us to see how green banking protection can halt erosion in its tracks.
Following the River Table demonstration, we went for a walk to Kirkland Dam on the River Leven. This allowed the students to see some of the features they had just learned about at the River Table, i.e. the impoundment that occurs upstream of the dam, the widened channel immediately below it, and beaches forming on the inside of the meander downstream.
It was such a pleasure to run the workshop for the students from Levenmouth Academy, and given their feedback, we think it was of interest to them. One of the aims of the school was to get students learning about, and reconnecting to the river, and this workshop certainly did that.
Delivery of this STEM workshop was supported through the River Leven restoration project being delivered by Fife Council with funding from SEPA Water Environment Fund.
