Tag Archives | clubs

Props for MARE Participants!

By Susan Haskell on November 4, 2010 in Odds and Ends

I was browsing through the October 30 issue of The Lacey-Barnegat Times and was excited to see 2010 MARE Summer Institute participant Gina Verderosa featured in an article! Gina received at $2,500 Go Green grant from the Ocean First Foundation to implement a variety of environmentally themed projects at the Joseph T. Donahue School in Barnegat, NJ. The grant money will be used to fund the school’s annual participation in the National Green Week in February. Each grade level will have an integral part in the program. Fourth and fifth grade students in the MARE Club will be working on landscaping around the school, managing a composting bin with the younger students in grades K-3 and acting as role-model “green-keepers” for the entire school population. Gina is advising the MARE club with fellow staff member Jane Goddard. Gina has plans to involve the whole school in going green with projects for each grade level:

Kindergarten will create and care for an indoor garden using recylced materials and producing plants for Mother’s Day!
First grade will recycle bottle caps and facilitate awareness that they are not recycled by township recycling programs.
Second grade classes will start with the compost bin and maintain it daily to eventually produce soil for the gardens.
Third grade classes will start an outdoor garden to beautify the school landscape.
Fourth grade students will organize a campaign to increase the amount of paper, plastic, cans and bottles that is recycled in the school.
Fifth grade classes will conduct energy audits and monitor recycling efforts at the school. They will analyze data and become the “report card” for the program.

BRAVO Barnegat crew!!! We are so proud of our MARE grads!

Check out your November 2010 issue of The New Jersey Education Association Reporter, in the Classroom Close up NJ section, you will see Rob Causton’s Oxford Central School as one of the programs receiving NJEA Frederick L. Hipp Foundation for Excellence in Education funding for their Oceans and Estuaries program. Seventh graders at the Oxford Central School traveled to Long Beach Island for a three-day camping and ocean/estuaries study. Host Wendell Steinhauer joined the students at the Coast Guard Station on LBI and at the Viking Village commercial fishing port. Thumbs up Oxford Central! Thank you for spreading our love of ocean science with your students!

How does MARE fit with the NJCCC STANDARDS?

By Susan Haskell on November 4, 2010 in Odds and Ends

The honest answer is easily and everywhere! The MARE activities span multiple disciplines including components of writing, reading, art, cooperative learning, math, history, physical education and of course Science! These same activities often spark extension lessons in music, interpersonal skills, vocabulary and spelling, and theater.

For example, our second grade classes study The Sandy Beach in the MARE curriculum. Since we have a bird’s eye view of Old Barney from our shores, the students were very interested in the lighthouse. We often visit the sandy beach at Island Beach State Park or Long Beach Island, NJ as part of our unit. We also contacted the wonderful people at the NJ Lighthouse Society for a school visitation. Now, how did we meet our CCCStandards?

We started with the principles of Understanding By Design (UBD) and identified the “big ideas” that we wanted our students to understand from the lessons. For example, we wanted our students to understand that lighthouses serve a purpose and that purpose is navigation assistance for marine travel. We also wanted the students to understand that lighthouse design follows a few common traits including shape, color and lense choice. Lastly, we wanted the students to understand that lighthouses have both an impact and play an integral part in the sandy beach habitats where they are located. Now, you may be thinking that we are straying very far from the content standards here….. but just wait…. it all comes together! Keep an open mind and know that you can address your CCCStandards easily with this or ANY MARE activity.

Once our “big ideas” or key concepts were identified, we then chose our activities to accomplish these concepts. We matched each activity with cross-curricular connections and with the Content Standards for our grade level. For this example, grades 1 to 2 are the target audiences, but it is adaptable for various grade levels. Below are three of the eight activities we chose and how they fit into the Content Standards.

Activity	MARE Activity	NJCCCS	Cross-Curricular Connection
Students will measure (ft.) and draw Barnegat Lighthouse on the playground using chalk.		4.1 Number Sense 4.2 Geometry/Measurement 1.1 Creative Art	Math Art
Sand sampling near lighthouse Sand sample examination using microscopes. Discussion Record observations in journal Navajo sand art	Sand on Stage	5.8 Earth materials5.1 Science Practices(observe and record) 5.6 Structure and Prop. Of Matter 3.3 Questioning & Discussion 3.2 Writing 1.2 Art History	Language Arts Art Social Studies
Bio blitz, identification and counting of plant and animal life at Barn. Lighthouse State Park habitat, record using flip video, journals,drawings, etc. MARE Seashore Charades will be used to have the students kinesthetically act out the adaptations of various organisms in the habitat both at high and low tides.	Seashore Charades	1.3 Performing Arts5.1 Science Practices(active investigation) 5.3 Life Science (various principles) 3.2 Writing 3.3 Speaking 8.1 Technology 4.4 Data analysis	Art Technology Language Arts Interpersonal Health Phys. Ed. Math

Many of the MARE lessons are correlated with the NJ Core Curricular Content Standards in the document “The Golden Lessons” available at this site: https://marine.rutgers.edu/main/MARE/Getting-Started-with-MARE.html and also on the Cosee site at: https://coseenow.net/mare/getting-started/

The MARE Master Trainers would also be happy to help you identify how your activity fits into the MARE program and the NJCCCS through the forum on this site. Just send out a query and we will be glad to help you!

We realize that justification is often requested or required by your supervisor. When you bring a new idea to your school, such as the MARE club or MARE curriculum, it often falls upon you to be the “salesperson” for the product. Please remember that your COSEE community is here to help you! I can promise you, it is definitely worth it!

MARE Goes To The Club

By Susan Haskell on August 22, 2010 in Club Resources, Odds and Ends

MARE is branching out from whole school participation, into small designated clubs. These clubs can be school based or community based, such as 4H or Scouting. The advantages of the club format include: freedom….sweet freedom! Freedom from tests, Freedom from curriculum constraints, Freedom of participants, Freedom of meeting times, Freedom of following your student’s own natural curiousity! A second advantage is creator control. You have the control over who attends the club, where and when it meets, and which MARE projects you explore! The big disadvantage is usually No Money, no money, no money. Few club leaders are paid positions. There is typically little money for supplies and field trips. Don’t let that discourage you. The benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks. Current MARE Summer Institute participants also have an excellent source for funding their first year within The Geraldine R. Dodge Grant with Rutgers University.

So let’s get started:

Define your target audience
Define your mission: What do you want to accomplish?
Recruit help: Principal or Supervisor, colleagues, parents, look beyond the Science dept., include former/older students, Math teachers, Artists, Physical Education specialists
Create publicity: wiki pages are often free, posters around the school or town, bulletin boards, blogs, newsletters, displays
Designate meeting times and place: try not to compete with other extra-curricular activities, check schedules, consider transportation requirements, consider equipment in the meeting room.
Consult websites such as: https://www.stemclubs.net for help and guidance
Give your club a cool name: students can create this at your first meeting
Require permission slips and release forms: give parents an overview of clearly defined expectations for attendance, behavior, field trips, parent participation, mission statement
Plan your first meeting: keep it simple!, Don’t plan a club like a classroom lesson; it needs to be different, involve the students in some decision making to encourage them to feel ownership of the club (perhaps let them choose from a short list of first activities or solicit ideas from them for future projects that interest them!) Keep the ideas of inquiry learning and curiousity as the fuel, foremost in your mind!
Set the agenda for your next meeting: enlist your students help in collecting needed supplies, ask students to contribute to an online wiki page: use pen names to keep student identity hidden, ask for feedback on meeting #1, ideas for the future, create an online science response journal, allow students to post questions
Establish a routine for club meetings: Gail Cervalo from the MARE Summer Institute suggested:

Enter and sign in
Thought experiment or Journal jotting (i.e., pretend you are an ice molecule on an ice flow in Antarctica, describe your journey)
Idea exchange
Team experiment and data recording
Reflection round
Journals go home for reflection, and sharing at the next meeting

For further explanation, you can contact Gail at: gceravolo@kearnyschools.com She is a wonderful resource!

Activities and Project Ideas:

Once you have your club set up and your mission statement clearly defined, where can you find ideas for projects? 2010 MARE Summer Institute participants should use their proposed project for Ocean Day as their starting point. In addition, there are numerous resources available online to match your student’s interest:

You can search the STEM Clubs website under Activity ideas or Project ideas https://www.stemclubs.net/projects

You can start with a “golden lesson” for any grade level in the MARE program, with CCCStandards, interdisciplinary ideas, materials lists, and simple clear directions at: https://marine.rutgers.edu/main/MARE/Getting-Started-with-MARE.html also on the COSEE site at: https://coseenow.net/mare/getting-started/

Add in some of the interactive, discovery learning lessons from the New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium at: https://www.njmsc.org/ registration is free. Marsh munchies is one of my personal favorites!

Go for a swim with UCLA’s Science Standards with Integrated Marine Science (SSWIMS) where lesson plans and data sets are listed alphabetically for easy searching: https://www.msc.ucla.edu/sswims/marinelinks2.htm

Rutgers COOL Room (Coastal Ocean Observatory Lab) can help you use online interactive lessons with real-time data on topics such as weather, sea surface temperature and currents, marine food webs and fish habitats. Middle to high school is the target age range for these activities! COOL off at: https://www.coolclassroom.org/teachers_guide/teachersguide.html

Of course, there are many more wonderful resources both online and in print. These are just a few to get you started! That is the important message: JUST GET STARTED! MARE clubs will have an intrinsic driving force….your students curiousity and motivation to learn. Keep it fun, keep it simple, enjoy the experience along side of your students. There is a little of that curious kid inside all of us…tap into it and let it free for an hour a week in your club!

There is a simple MARE club planning page in the documents section on the COSEE site: https://coseenow.net/groups/mare/documents/

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