Sparks Elementary School		A 2005 No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon Winner
Sparks Sharks are Always Moving Forward!

Green School Program

Blue Bird Watch

COME BACK THIS SPRING FOR UPDATED MONITORING INFO AND MORE PICTURES!

Sparks Elementary sits on 64 acres of what used to be farmland. The western boundary of the school grounds is I-83 and 100 yards in from this highway is Piney Creek, a tributary to the Gunpowder which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The school population has transitioned with the community from a rural farm area spotted with homes to suburban neighborhoods and homes spotted with farmland.

Sparks Elementary started its bluebird trail in the spring of 2004 after two teachers attended a BCPS sponsored workshop on schoolyard habitat. Although the campus and staff had already been doing some environmental education activities, the bluebird trail marked the beginning of a galvanized school wide effort to fully utilize classroom that was right outside our back door.

In the spring of 2004, twenty bluebird houses were constructed as a group effort. A parent volunteer cut the wood to the bluebird house specifications and the plan was for the fifth grade students to assemble and erect the bluebird houses. There was a learning curve. Two days before the students were to assemble the houses, two fifth grade teachers and the PE teacher thought they would assemble one as a model. These houses were not as simple as they had looked online and would be virtually impossible for students to assemble unless holes were pre-drilled for every house. That is twenty houses times twelve holes per house. At midnight on Saturday night, we were still drilling holes and during assembly the students quickly could tell which holes were drilled in the early hours and which ones were drilled in the wee morning hours!

Sinking the poles for the bluebird houses was coordinated with an activity to mulch the nature trail. A fifth grade math class walked the trail and mapped the proper location and distance for placement of the houses. The houses were placed using a “pairing” philosophy. Our area has a high population of tree swallows who will out-compete a blue bird for the same box. Once a tree swallow has established it’s home it will not allow another tree swallow to nest nearby, but will allow a bluebird and even protects the bluebird. One of the things that we learned was that we had placed our pairs too far apart and had more tree swallows than bluebirds.

In the spring of 2005, our PE teacher Melinda Hoffman and Kate Russell, the school nurse, ran a blue bird program as part of our Eco-Sharks after-school environmental enrichment program. Students participated in learning more about birds, monitoring, and maintenance of the boxes. We had a parent who also assisted in monitoring the boxes. All boxes were occupied by the end of the summer and six of the boxes were occupied by bluebirds. The rest of the boxes were occupied by tree swallow, wren, chickadee, and sparrow families. As sparrows are aggressive and harmful to blue birds and unprotected, they were evicted as soon as their nest were discovered in the boxes.

We developed a partnership with Grant Healey and Wendy Baker, parents of former Sparks’ students, who own Wild Birds Unlimited. Mr. Healey came and walked the trail with us and advised us about the pairing and recommended that the paired boxes be placed 10 feet apart from each other and that the sets are a football field’s length away from each other. Equally important in the success has been parent involvement. A fifth grade mother helped to coordinate the fifth grade school gift and the class of 2005 bought the school 6 more bluebird boxes, a wood duck box, kestrel box, and 2 screech owl boxes. We hope of have more bluebird families next spring as we have adjusted some of the box pairings.

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This website was created by Daniel Briscuso