Powell students’ exhibits on display at Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Posted 8/26/21

A small group of incoming sixth-graders at Powell Middle School can now say they’ve had their work featured at a world-class museum.

On Aug. 13, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West …

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Powell students’ exhibits on display at Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Posted

A small group of incoming sixth-graders at Powell Middle School can now say they’ve had their work featured at a world-class museum.

On Aug. 13, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West officially welcomed three temporary exhibits built by five recent Westside Elementary School graduates during the 2020-21 school year. Each exhibit is connected to Yellowstone National Park, which the students studied during their fifth grade year.

Claudia Preator and Keaton Bennett, who were members of Kelsey Tobin’s class, built a model of the park’s famed Fishing Bridge. Their exhibit notes that the current 532-foot-long structure was completed in 1937. It also says the public was banned from fishing from the bridge in 1973, because people “were catching too many trout” — taking food away from bears and damaging fish populations.

Meanwhile, Grace Gordon and Sophia Stearns, of Lexi Kalberer’s class, featured black bears. A detailed diorama is surrounded by bear facts — including what the opportunistic feeders like to eat (ranging from dandelions to berries to insects), their average size (126-551 pounds for males and 90-375 pounds for females) and their appearance (“Black bears are, you guessed it, black!” the exhibit notes).

As for Leora Graham, another graduate of Tobin’s classroom, she used clay to craft an exhibit on Yellowstone’s mud pots and how they work. Drawing from a couple sources, she noted the giant volcano underneath the park powers the bubbling features. As for why they’re muddy, Graham explains that “micro-organisms break down dirt and rock and turn it into a liquid-mud.”

For the next year, all three exhibits will be displayed at the Center of the West’s Seasons of Discovery area, inside the Draper Natural History Museum.

Westside fifth-graders’ top exhibits have been displayed at the center for the past several years.

“It’s just become this great partnership,” said Megan Smith, the center’s school services coordinator.

Students pick their own topics and get a chance to check out professional exhibits at the Center of the West before crafting their own displays. 

“It’s really quite amazing what they come up with,” said Abram Graham, another of the fifth-grade teachers at Westside.

The students also make an annual trip to Yellowstone to see the park up close. The field trip usually involves an overnight stay in West Yellowstone, Montana, but COVID restrictions shortened this year’s to one very long day (with the students leaving at 6:30 a.m. and not getting back until 7:30 p.m.).

Students then honed their exhibits at school and at home before presenting them to parents. Their teachers picked the top displays, then personnel from the Center of the West chose the winners. The partnership between the museum and Westside is set to continue in 2021-22 — giving this year’s fifth-graders a chance to get their exhibits displayed at the Smithsonian Institution-affiliated center as well.

“Each year it just gets better and better,” Tobin said.

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