Forest Heights Elementary School shares a border with Oxon Cove Park, a 500-acre national park in Oxon Hill, Maryland. The park and the school have a partnership in which the students in grades 4-6 learn about the National Park Service, and about nature, healthy lifestyles, and history, while enjoying the outdoors and building stewardship.

On three days in October, 2012, the classes walked to the park and tested the water in Oxon Run, a stream which flows beside the school and through the park, where it empties into Oxon Cove, on the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C. Before testing the water, the students first learned what a watershed is and what we all can do to protect our watershed. After the testing date, the students went to the World Water Monitoring Day website to compare/contrast their findings with the results from sites throughout the world.

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