Grades: 4-6 (can be modified for older students as a fire management program)
Subject: Science
Skills: Communicate, Observe, Identify, Model
Duration: 4.5 hours
Group Size: 60 students, 2 groups of 30 students
Location: Rocky Point Trail
Available Dates: Fall and Spring
Vocabulary: See the bolded words in the objectives below.

Summary: Students participate in an introduction at Apgar and then travel to a 2 mile long (round-trip) trail to hike with a ranger.  There will be stops at various points along the trail to do activities or discuss something that they see in the forest. 

Objectives: (These are examples of some of the objectives that can be achieved on a fire walk. Many others are possible depending on the teacher’s focus and the ranger).

Students will be able to:

• Tell what national parks protect and one reason Glacier National Park was established.
• Identify coniferous trees with a dichotomous key.
  Give 3 examples of interrelationships in the forest.
• Give one example each of an effect on plants and on wildlife from a forest fire.
• Point to an area that has had a disturbance other than fire.
• Model how trees transfer food and water throughout their structures, and how they are adapted for protection from fire.
• Tell how a fire might increase plant reproduction.
• List the three parts of the fire triangle (fuel, oxygen, and heat) and how each contributes to a fire.
• Give examples of adaptations that plants and animals have to fire.
• Explain how we can understand past fires by examining tree cookies and fire scars.
• Discuss how fires are all different and act in varying ways depending on environmental factors like wind, fuel, terrain, and make a prediction about how a fire with certain conditions might burn. 
• Discuss 2 organisms who not only can survive fire, but who actually thrive after a fire.
• Explain how Native Americans used fire, and name one important role fire plays in a natural system.

Montana Content and Performance Standards:

10.54.5010 Science Standard 1= “…design, conduct, evaluate, and communicate scientific investigations.”

10.54.5030 Science Standard 3= “…demonstrate knowledge of characteristics, structures and function of living things, the process and diversity of life, and how living organisms interact with each other and their environment.”

10.54.5040 Science Standard 4= “…demonstrate knowledge of the composition, structures, processes, and interactions of earth’s systems and other objects in space.”

Making Connections to Glacier National Park:

One of the reasons Glacier National Park was established was to preserve the natural processes and the biological diversity (variety of plants and animals) that live here.

Field Trip Logistics:

Teachers wishing to have their students participate in the fire ecology field trip should plan to arrive in the park by 9:30 – 10 a.m. and stay until 1:30 – 2 p.m. Everyone must be prepared to be outside all day and ready to hike 2 miles on fairly level terrain.