Stump Stories: A Guided Inquiry

Before you begin, you may want to consider engaging with our Exploring with Math framework:

• click here for a guiding video

Stump Stories Week 1: 

Old stumps have interesting stories to tell and they have been waiting silently to tell them for a very long time. In part 1 of this inquiry, our job is to carefully observe the stumps in our neighbourhood parks and even our own school yard. What do we notice and wonder about these stumps as individuals and as a group?

• Click here to watch the introduction video Stump Stories
• Forest Task 1: locate stumps within a local park or wild space and write some initial observations of 1 or 2 interesting stumps based on your senses. Click here for an explanation of what it means to observe stumps with your senses.
• Parents and teachers: Do you feel like you need some extra information about the stumps in our region to help guide your children/students in this inquiry? Click here for A Guide to Old Stumps

Stump Stories Week 2: 

Next, spend some time this week practicing using your body as a tool of measurement. This is very handy for forest observation as you won’t need to carry any extra tools with you.

• Click here to watch the video Body Ruler
• Practice 1 (Measuring using body units): Measuring Level 1
• Practice 2 (Converting those measurements into metric units): Measuring Level 2
• Forest Task 2: revisit the place where you found stumps. Use your body ruler to measure different aspects of each stump, including distances between various stumps.

Stump Stories Week 3: 

At this point, you have spent time collecting data on stumps. This week, you are going to get to know your stumps more deeply and make hypotheses about what happened to them. You might decide that some of them shared a similar fate and may be part of a larger story that happened at a particular time in our history. In order to perceive these broader patterns, we have some math work ahead of us!

• Click here for a graphing exploration of tally mark data. How can we best represent our data to know the stories of our stumps?
• Click here for making hypothesis. What might be the stories of our stumps? How do you know?

Stump Stories Week 4: 

• Click here for an investigation of the recorded history of the Tri-Cities area.  You are looking for ideas about what could have happened to the big, old stumps a long time ago. You are also developing an understanding of the impact that colonization had on the land and the people who were here long before European settlers.

Stump Stories Week 5: 

Take a moment to look at the Tri-Cities history timeline you created, then take a look at these photos: Stump Pictures

Can you explain with certainty what had happened to these stumps? Can you specifically explain:

• Why many of them have notches and cuts on them?
• Why many of them have burn marks?
• Why many of them are so huge?

Next, it is time to do a little math. You are going to determine approximately how long ago the trees were notched, cut, and burned. Timelines are number lines. If you put 2021 on your timeline, can you find the difference between years on your timeline and this year?

Stump Stories Week 6: 

• The Elders are Watching. What does this book help us understand about the past? What does it help us consider about our present? Click here for a reading of this awesome book.
• How do stumps support the life of the forest that came after? Check your infomaps. What does it show? If you can’t tell…time to head back to the forest! In your opinion, are the stumps really dead?
• Next, time to discuss: What is our responsibility to the forest (including the old stumps) now?