Lura A. White Elementary School

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2017 MCAS Schedule

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NEW PreK-8 Student Handbook

Please click the link below to access the PreK-8 Student Handbook.

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“The Art of Aquatic Insect Investigations”

What are benthic macro-invertebrates? Why are they important relative to the health of our rivers? What is a dichotomous key? If you ask a fifth grade student at Lura A. White Elementary School in Shirley, they will have the answers. Those students participated in “The Art of Aquatic Insect Investigations,” a year-long project led by NRWA Env ... Continue ironmental Education Assistant, Gaynor Bigelbach, in coordination with Janet MacFarland, the school’s fifth grade science teacher. The project was funded by a STARS Residency grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. Students engaged in a series of seven workshops. In the first workshop, students worked with live aquatic insects (benthic macro-invertebrates) from the river, and learned to sort, identify, and photograph them. During later workshops, students did deep research on specific aquatic insects, learned insect anatomy, and studied species classification systems and use of dichotomous keys (a tool used to identify items in the natural world through a series of choices that lead the reader to the correct answer). During an interactive workshop on water pollution, students discovered how pollutants enter our waterways, how pollution impacts the insects living there, and how scientists can study the presence or absence of these insects to determine the water quality of a river or stream. In the final workshops, students learned about the art of scientific drawing, and created their own scientific drawings of the macro-invertebrates they had studied. Those drawings were photographed and used to create their own dichotomous key. They then used their new knowledge and dichotomous key to lead an aquatic insect workshop for fourth grade students. What does this all add up to? Science and art, learning and fun, and a group of students excited about science and engaged in the world around them.