Mount teacher candidates brought leaning to life for the fifth grade students of Bishop Dunn Memorial School by creating their own aquatic ecosystems.
In “The Little Mermaid,” Sebastian the crab sang, “the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.”
Fifth graders at Bishop Dunn Memorial School and a dozen Mount Saint Mary College teacher candidates put that to the test recently by creating their own aquatic ecosystems.
The teacher candidates – from education professor Ludmila Smirnova’s Science Methods course – helped the fifth graders catalog changes in the habitats. They also compared their small habitats with animal life in the Hudson River.
The organisms living in the aquatic ecosystem tanks included dragon fly nymphs, snails, worms, and fish. Some of the creatures thrived and some did not, giving students a firsthand look at how aquatic systems function, noted fifth grade teachers Jennifer Weber and Kelly Vasilakos
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Ludmila Smirnova (center), Mount education teacher, said that the aquatic ecosystems project showed the Bishop Dunn students that “science has meaningful, real life” applications.
“Every day, my students got to observe the changes and the interactions between the organisms,” explained Vasilakos. “With stones, sand, and plant life, we tried to emulate a real pond.”
The fifth graders fed and took care of the animals in between eight learning sessions lead by Smirnova’s students.
Veronica Malloy of Millbrook, N.Y. spearheaded the project as a way for the young students to go beyond their textbooks.
“Instead of looking at oceans and rivers, the students had a manageable amount of animals and information, as well as something visual to learn from,” Malloy explained. “It’s part of the [New York] State Standards and the Common Core that students learn the importance of models, not only in math, but in science as well.”
The project gave Malloy and the other Mount students an opportunity to teach an entire class, as well as small groups.
“I think I’m a better teacher for it,” she said. “It really developed my class management and it put the learning into the kids’ hands.”
Malloy hopes to implement the project in her own classroom when she is a teacher.
Smirnova and the Mount students wish to thank Tiffany Davis, Mount curriculum librarian, who researched and purchased the materials needed for habitats.