Ella, Daisy, and Kate
It has been about three months since Westside School’s salmon eggs arrived. At the moment, the Coho salmon are in the fry stage of their development. The Coho salmon are appropriately one centimeter wide and one inch long. The second grade will release the Coho salmon within one month. They will have to protect themselves from predators like bears, herons, eagles, whales and fisherman. The salmon have about one month to prepare for their wild release to the great outdoors.
We sent a few questions to Laura about the Coho and these are her answers.
1. What do you hope your class learns from this?
to gain respect for the environment, learn about the importance of salmon in our community and our role in keeping them healthy, the life cycle of the salmon and make scientific observations of salmon in the tank.
2. Do you think your class enjoyed this experience?
The kids have loved the fish. Their experience covers science (fish dissection and anatomy), writing (each child is writing his/her version of Diary of a Salmon inspired by the book series Diary of a Fly, Diary of a Spider and Diary of a Worm) and art projects.
3. Overall how did you think the whole thing went?
So far, the salmon in the tank are thriving, despite a few deaths. The students become very attached to the fish and they learn a lot about them in a variety of ways.
