ISAAC School’s backyard, New London, CT, is surrounded by water ... the Thames River and the Long Island Sound. What a wonderful opportunity for our students: to extend our classroom to the nearby waterfront and conduct an ongoing, authentic environmental investigation of the ecology and physical characteristics of the Long Island Sound. Their inquiry and discovery will have real-world impact as they will share their findings with other schools and the international community by creating an online electronic “Field Guide” about “Life in the Long Island Sound.” They will also post the physical data they collect on a weekly basis and its corresponding analysis through podcasts on a weekly blog and available by RSS feed to families and other subscribers.  Both will be posted on the ISAAC and Project Oceanology’s websites.



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This is an initiative that will impact the entire school: all 13 classrooms, all 180 students, all 17 teachers, both (two) administrators, and our educational support staff which numbers from 1 to 5. Over 60% of our students come from urban New London and while they may live near the water, many have never even been to the beach. The other 40% of students come from 12 neighboring towns. Our Long Island Sound investigation will be part of a school-wide theme called “Human Interaction with Nature” for the 2010-2011 school year. Every core subject area will deliver a technology-based lesson or unit revolving around this theme, as well as music, visual arts, world language, health, and physical education.

This year-long project will be initiated by an offshore/onshore day of labs conducted by Project Oceanography. There will two separate days with 45 students attending each of two workshops. Two 2.5-hour sessions will take place in the morning and afternoon, one on-shore, the other off-shore aboard Project Oceanology’s research vessel. Every student will attend both sessions. Here teachers and students alike will learn about authentic scientific sampling techniques and equipment, collect physical data and conduct organism sampling. They will learn about the general biology, food web structures, and ecology of the Long Island Sound, as well as the importance of data and how it can be manipulated to answer important questions. Students will document these experiences with photos, video and ‘live’ data they will bring back to the classroom through the use of electronic probes that downloads to the computer for analysis. The documentation they collect will become the foundation for their web pages.

Throughout the year, one science class per week will walk to City Pier in New London to collect weekly data directly from the Thames River at the mouth Long Island Sound. They will use probeware to collect scientific data including air and water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, and sunlight exposure. Students will observe and record numbers of organisms in a specified area during their data collection time. Back in the classroom, probeware will be linked to our digital whiteboards so that the instructor can project and interact with the data collected by our students, and formatively assess their understanding using hand-held electronic response devices. Samples of organisms can be studied under the electronic microscope, projected for all to see.

Project Oceanology’s involvement will not end after the initials days of onshore/offshore investigations at Avery Point and Bluff Point. We will invite them into the classroom to lead an analysis of the data and what it means about the health and vitality of our local aquatic ecosystem. Science and math teachers will be provided with release time from regular classes to attend these sessions as a form of professional development, and to be able to develop a common language to be shared between science and math classrooms.

Core math classes will contribute to the science of data analysis integrating Excel into a unit on statistical analysis. Students will plot and manipulate data in a variety of graphing formats to analyze environmental changes throughout the year. Adding data collected by past Project O students, they will be asked to look for patterns and changes over time. The process of interpretation will flow from the math classroom back into science where students will relate their data to tilt of the earth (seasons), analyze unique physical and chemical properties of water, and research point and non-point local pollutants that may be affecting this data. Project Oceanology staff will work with teachers to model and deliver high-level scientific analysis lessons. Ultimately, students will be asked to critically analyze this information to answer the essential question, “How do human behaviors impact the health of aquatic environments?”

Students, teachers and the greater ISAAC community would like to thank Dominion for supporting $10,000 toward this project  through an Education Partnership grant, and Pfizer for $10,000 provided during the 2009-2010 school year to support our science program.