Underwater Ecosystem Adventure

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My students study the delicate balance that exists between the plants, animals, landforms, climate, bodies of water, and humans in the arctic ecosystem. They read Julie of the Wolves by Jean George while researching, writing, and transforming our classroom into an Arctic Museum. They serve as tour guides for other classrooms to learn about this balance. I want my students to experiment with the concept of ecosystems by creating a balanced underwater ecosystem in our classroom. I would like to have an empty aquarium at the beginning of the year and allow them to determine what plants, animals, landforms, climate, water type, and human activity they would like to introduce. They will gradually witness problems within the ecosystem due to its unbalance, and will therefore need to hypothesize what may be the problem, research a solution, and suggest and implement a change to better maintain the balance in their underwater ecosystem. Then evaluate the system again to see how its parts are adapting. This will continue throughout the year as a longterm ongoing project. I teach all of the subjects to the same 32 students throughout the day through an integrated curriculum my team has designed. I work in a Chicago Public School and we serve a low-income population and with about 60% second language learners, and are currently on probation due to low achievement on standardized tests. All of my students will participate in the project weekly if not daily throughout the year in order to develop and maintain the underwater ecosystem. I will need one large (10 ?20 gallon) glass or acrylic tank, and top that fits and protects its contents, a water filtration system, nets/skimmers, light, water testing strips, guide/trade/informational books/CD-ROMS (student friendly), starter kit, take home animal/fishbowls/aquariums for over long vacations, and funding to purchase fish/animals, plants, foods, light, gravel/other landforms depending on the students?decisions throughout the year. I feel it is crucial for me to continue to expose my students to real world problems and offer units of study and the materials that interest them, especially in science. My school provides me with a science textbook that has chapters on ecosystems with questions at the end for the students to answer. I do not believe in teaching science this way, which is why I need your help to acquire these materials. Through this life-changing experience, these students will have a real life opportunity to explore, understand, and analyze the problems our ecosystems face today.