SEARCH Travels to
DNA Learning Center
The Cold Spring Harbor Lab's Dolan DNA Learning Center has grown in stature over the years. A large number of Long Island school children pass through its doors nearly every day of the year. Since its right around the corner, Huntington School District students have been among the most frequent participants in the Center's educational programs.
A group of 45 Huntington fifth grade SEARCH program students recently traveled to the Center for a fun-filled day of science. The youngsters were accompanied by Maryann Daly, the SEARCH program chairperson-teacher and SEARCH teacher Christina Gottlieb.
During the morning session, students investigated the many hands-on activities displayed in the Center's museum while completing an extensive questionnaire and worksheets relating to each of the numbered stations. "All of the activities related to the genetics these students have been studying about since September during their weekly SEARCH classes," Mrs. Daly said.
Another facet of the morning session was devoted to a lab that featured the outlining of the specific parts of the double helix and their importance to the human race. "The children knew the meaning of this sophisticated vocabulary and eagerly answered the questions posed during this time period," Mrs. Daly said.
Each student then worked on assembling a model of DNA, using colored rods to represent the nucleotides and black and white ladders to represent the sugars and phosphates on this model. Students later brought home their model even though some had some very sore thumbs after this lesson was completed!
After a quick lunch and a movie on cell parts, students dove into a two-hour lab entitled on glowing genes. During the lab the youngsters learned how to accurately measure and use the pipettes, carefully measured out chemicals given to them and used agar filled Petri dishes.
"They each had to sterilize a metal probe using a Bunson burner in order to scrape bacteria from a prepared Petri dish," Mrs. Daly said. The Huntington teachers brought these cultures back to Woodhull so their students could see the results of their experiments during their SEARCH classes the following week.
When the long day of learning had finally wrapped up, both teachers and students were tired. On their way back to Woodhull School, many youngsters spoke softly to each other about how impressed they were to have studied at a world class facility and how interesting the sessions really were.