My wish for this project is to allow my 8th graders to become familiar with the life cycles of oysters, to determine their energy and resource needs, and to work with the Billion Oyster community to increase the oyster population within NYC waterways. Specifically, my students will be working with one tank of oysters in Williamsburg, and I would like for us to keep the oysters in our tank living for the duration of the year, adding approximately a dozen oysters to the population.
Our group will be working with one tank of oysters that we placed in a Brooklyn waterway. We will visit the tank four times during the school year, collecting data on the conditions of the water, health, size and growth of the oysters, as well as taking stock of any additional flora and fauna co-existing with our oyster population. Outside of these four visits, we will be working within our classroom to learn about the oysters themselves; why did the start disappearing from New York; what was their benefit to our community; why are we working so hard to bring them back? In order to properly collect data regarding the oysters, students will be learning about the oysters themselves: how do they live, grow, reproduce, and what do they need to survive. They will also need to become familiar with this specific type of data collection, which means they will be exposed to many tools for measuring water turbidity, weather conditions, specimen sampling and more. As a result, their STEM knowledge will be greatly increased from exposure to real-life science and problem solving!
