All agree that the query “what if, what then” we intend to use can be easily applied to the other content areas, for example, the dynamics of cause and effect apply to all, but with more inference and more uncertainty as in social studies. And we all agreed that we wanted our students to look at their community in different ways, with more understanding of numerous dynamics of physical and social change and with more intimacy that understanding brings. Further, we agreed that enculturation should be a stronger emphasis on our team: that students should experience experience - looking, doing, thinking, reflecting - in the broadest range that we can offer, and certainly outside the classroom.

With the Rivers Project, Communications, Mathematics, and Science will use the three procedures as vehicles for experience - the looking, doing, thinking, reflecting. The initial fall visit to the site will initiate a vocabulary and methodology for student involvement with the community and extended to the national community with Internet research, particularly the comparative national maps for rainfall, ph, DO . . . even as we spent preparatory time with internet sites we were amazed with the possibilities - rainfall and geographic features like the Sierras and their heavy rainfall compared to the desert west. With this, the ideas of correlation and connectivity will be a concern and a focus with students.

With the procedures, we intend to foster questions about seasonal variables from the first collected data, i.e., with a drop in temperature what happens to the chem numbers; which are likely to change or remain relatively; what happens to dissolved oxygen as water changes form; do bacterial counts change with temperature; what happens to the macroinvertebrates; and so on.

Since procedure does suggest adherence, method, and reliability we want students to become more and more comfortable with the process, and certainly with any process, and understand the benefits of procedure. As the students actually begin to design their own experiments and procedures, which we intend for our more experienced second year students, we hope they follow a PROBLEM > DATA> HYPOTHESIZE>ANALYZE>CONCLUDE>PUBLISH model which could certainly apply or transfer to any situation, with or without modification.