DNA Learning Center Visits
SEARCH Students
Fifth grade students in the Huntington School District’s SEARCH program recently participated in two-hour hands-on labs led by Amanda McBrien, the assistant education director of the Cold Spring Harbor Lab’s Dolan DNA Learning Center
Separate sessions were presented at Woodhull and Jack Abrams Schools. Mrs. McBrien and Maryann Daly, Huntington’s SEARCH (Scholastic Enrichment and Resource for Children in Huntington) chairperson and a teacher in the program worked together to customize the labs so they would closely relate to and enhance a new half-year unit of study called “Earth 2010.”
For the past several months these same students have been immersed in weekly labs with Mrs. Daly, testing water samples brought from home (tap, purified and collected rain water) for the ph, copper, phosphate, chlorine, hardness and softness of the water and nitrogen levels. The youngsters also took stock of water ratings issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Studying about how pollutants can get into the water supply and negatively impact the environment is also a major part of the new unit. So Mrs. McBrien developed a bio-remediation lab that had teams of two Huntington students each being given Petri dishes of agar and genetically engineered substances, which would indicate the presence of oil in this environment. A control was included in the four samples each team had to investigate.
“The use of actual pipettes in these labs was not only fun for the kids but a necessary tool for them to use in measuring out the proper quantities of the indicator to place into each of the four labeled Petri dishes,” Mrs. Daly said. “The presence of oil could be seen in the agar after a few days if there was evidence of a bright pink color in any of the samples. Those samples not containing any oil would be clear.”
After this experiment was completed, each class indicated on their lab sheets what each of their four labeled Petri dishes contained. “Yes, we found the oil and some of the samples indicated that bacteria was also present,” Mrs. Daly said.
Following the workshop, the SEARCH students created an oil spill in a “simulated ocean” and learned how difficult it was to clean up. Using a lesson created on a SMART Board, the fifth graders saw how devastating the 1999 Exxon-Valdez oil spill was on sea and bird life and the environment of Prince William Sound in Alaska.
During the next few weeks students will be covering plenty of additional ground, learning more about the soil, studying local pond and bay water samples and conducting lead testing on mugs, plates and ceramics brought from home and also found in school. “A comprehensive report will then be compiled by these students and presented to the community in the spring,” Mrs. Daly said.
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