THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503100214
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Calvin Burrell, a 12-year-old from Cavalier Manor, and his seventh-grade classmates at Waters Middle School recently stepped into the teacher's role as part of a joint project with Simonsdale Elementary School.
On three recent mornings, Calvin and 40 other Waters students shared with 120 Simonsdale second-graders the importance of the Chesapeake Bay and the preservation of its resources.
Using a multidisciplinary approach, Calvin and the other young student-teachers employed a water-testing apparatus, a video microscope, skits, and stories to present the effects of pollution on the Bay and its wildlife.
The project, funded by a grant from the state Education Department, was coordinated by Cathy Roberts and Margaret Duffy, teachers at Waters, and Leann Cherry, who teaches at Simonsdale.
By including the elementary students in the project, Roberts and Duffy were able to not only reach more children, but to reinforce what their seventh-graders had learned. ``There is nothing like teaching to learn something,'' Roberts said.
In addition to sharing lessons, the seventh-graders will pair up with the second-graders, one on one, in a shoreline debris clean-up at City Park and to attend a luncheon featuring Suzanne Tate, a children's environmental writer.
Calvin was surprised to find that his first few groups of second-graders were not immediately captivated by his demonstration of testing water samples for salinity. ``They told me they were bored,'' he said.
After some discussion with Roberts, Calvin polished his presentation by involving the younger children more in the testing and showing them how they could hear the roar of the ocean in a conch shell.
``But it is really their heartbeat that they hear,'' he confided.
Kathy Katselos, a 12-year-old from Park Manor, wrote the script for a skit that cast the second-graders as baby blue crabs sheltering from predators in the eel grass of the Chesapeake Bay. The children learned that when pollution blocks the sunlight the eel grass dies, leaving the young blue crabs defenseless.
``I learned a lot, too,'' Kathy said. ``All about the different kinds of animals in the Bay and what pollution can do to them.''
Anita Powell, a 12-year-old from Brighton, staffed the video microscope and showed the second-graders that what vaguely resembled a pepperoni pizza on the monitor screen really was an enlarged image of a drop of water, teeming with microscopic life. ``We have little paramecia and amoebas to put under the microscope to show them how they move, what they eat, what eats them, and where they live,'' Anita said.
Bill Blake, an English teacher at Waters, put his storytelling talents to work sharing with second-graders some of author Suzanne Tate's tales of the sea. Blake was backed by several seventh-graders holding props to illustrate his stories.
How effective were the seventh-graders as teachers? ``The kids from Waters have been very well-prepared to work with the children, and my children are listening to them,'' Carol Beaver, a second-grade teacher said.
After the storytelling session, her second-graders sought out the ocean-related books in their classroom and had one important question: ``When are the kids from Waters coming back?'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos by GARY C. KNAPP
Waters Middle School student Lisa Wyatt, left, helps second-graders
at Simonsdale Elementary.
Ashley Humphries, left, and Angela Caprio check a sample of water
from the Bay.
by CNB