Some third graders at West Fannin Elementary School were fortunate enough to visit with Tim Mercier of Mercier’s Orchards on Thursday, October 18^th.  Mercier’s has worked with 1^st and 3rd-grade students for two years in their apple orchard beginning with helping to plant our 15 trees.  These 15 trees are part of our on-going STEAM project.  Students learn about our three different types of apples in our orchard (Arkansas Black, Gold Rush, Crimson Topaz).  Students learn about the origin of the trees and how and when to plant the trees.  Students also go out once a month and measure each tree and graph them in a bar graph.  These graphs are then used to compare from month to month and from year to year the growth of the trees.  As students were measuring this month they noticed that some of our trees were not growing as we had hoped and that there were some brown spots on our leaves.  As they were researching they wanted to ask Mercier’s to come back and see our trees and help us to diagnose our problems.  Mr. Mercier was kind enough to come out and share with our students.  These students will now go back and redeliver the findings to the rest of the third-grade students.  As the kids would say, “ We now know our problem so now we will start planning on how we will create a solution to solve this problem.”

Picutred at the top: Tim Mercier, Brody Graham and Keats Miller (2 boys in front), Josalyn Deal and Sadie Patto