West Tisbury teacher Lauren Serpa’s third-grade class recently presented a project on white shark conservation to a room full of proud parents and museum staff. The kids’ presentation, “Respect the Locals,” in the Morgan Learning Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, is part of the children’s section of the museum’s “Jaws” exhibit.
“I think the overlap of this class’s project and the M.V. Museum’s big summer exhibit, ‘“Jaws’ at 50: A Deeper Dive,” has provided such a great opportunity for us to showcase amazing work being created by Island students,” said museum Education Manager Rebecca Nutton.
Serpa’s class began their project in April. “We worked with the school librarian and junior high mentors, who assisted the younger students with their online research,” she said. “The project addresses common fears about sharks, raises public awareness about shark safety, the vital role white sharks play in the ecosystem, and the importance of conservation.”
The students also had the opportunity to collaborate with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC). “Michaela Nix, their education program director, joined our classroom via Zoom to teach us about white sharks and the AWSC’s mission,” Serpa continued. “Later, Michaela visited the Island and taught students about the White Shark Logbook. Students examined acoustic detection data and made inferences about shark behavior over time, just like real scientists.”
Serpa received a grant from Cape Cod 5 Bank for the project. “Our class was the proud recipient of a Cape Cod 5 Educational Mini-Grant, which made it possible to welcome an AWSC educator into our classroom and take a field trip to the conservancy. These hands-on experiences brought science to life, and deepened students’ understanding of white sharks in our local waters. Then the project evolved into a bigger production, with more people collaborating.”
West Tisbury computer teacher Jeff Majkowski supported students with the technology end of things as they learned how to write a research report and then created Google Slide presentations. School librarian Stephanie Dreyer assisted with shark research with junior high students, and Isabel Moore and Sonny Siemenski, assistants in Serpa’s classroom, helped edit the students’ work and slideshow elements.
West Tisbury School art teacher Nancy Danielson was also an integral part of the shark team, helping the kids create shark-related art to add to the project. “I love collaborating with the classroom teachers,” Danielson says. “Any time I can connect artmaking with core subjects, it expands the students’ ideas about creativity and the ability of art to tell a story.”
After enjoying cookies and juice, the kids dove into their presentation. Standing at the front of the room, they shared some of what they learned about sharks, including that although the director of “Jaws” made Bruce look like a monster, real sharks aren’t monsters; sharks are really just fish that live in the water. Certain other sea animals would disappear if sharks disappeared, and we are in the sharks’ habitat, the students learned.
Student Avery Simmons said that it was pretty fun getting the information on sharks. “We went there [AWSC], and they broke us into groups and got us researching, and gave us all this information about what we were learning. It was fun. The dots on the nose of the shark I drew are like pores so I had to add them in.”
Third grader Jack Nannes shared, “I never really knew all this stuff about sharks, and thought scary things, but now I know more and I like them a lot. In our Google slideshows it was really fun to mess around on the computer and add information. I didn’t only learn about the shark I picked, I learned more about other sharks other people picked.”
Young shark connoisseur Jonah Whiteley-Casey reflects, “I thought it was really fun, because sharks are a really interesting species to study, and they have a lot of cool features. The people from the conservancy were really nice, and it really helped us with our studies.”
The shark exhibit will be up throughout the summer at the museum. “The kids’ passion and commitment for this research project is evident,” Nutton says. “They are discovering the power of their voices and the impact that they can have in their community, and I’m so excited that many museum visitors over the coming months will get to view their hard work.”
Visit the Martha’s Vineyard Museum at mvmuseum.org.
Lauren Serpa’s students dazzle us once again. Hurray for all involved!
Comments are closed.