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Students get to be teachers for a day
By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE © St. Petersburg Times, published February 22, 2001 CRYSTAL RIVER -- One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. And Tammy MacDonald's Crystal River Middle School sixth graders learned several things recently, including many facts about manatees and that teaching is not an easy job. Using funds from a grant for manatee awareness, MacDonald's students invited third-grade children from Rock Crusher Elementary School to a nine-station manatee workshop. Most of the older students were divided among the stations they had created. One student, Danny Owens, circulated around the room dressed as a big, fuzzy, gray manatee in a costume on loan from the Manatee Toy Co. (That same company also lent the students a manatee skeleton.) At table one, the Rock Crusher children learned about manatee teeth using chalk and sandpaper. "They rub the chalk on the sandpaper and the sandpaper represents sand in the food," explained Lori Carter. Her group was trying to illustrate why manatees' teeth wear down and then are replaced. The second station was a math lesson with problems for the children to solve. For example: "Sidney (a manatee) ate 50 lbs. of food, then she ate 75 lbs. of food. How much did she eat total?" The third station centered on writing. "We're teaching them how to make a haiku," said Michael Sanchez. "It's a poem. It has three sentences. The first sentence has five syllables, the next with seven syllables and the third five. We're teaching syllables, too." An example of one haiku was "Manatees are gray. Manatees are very fat. Manatees have fingernails." On to station four. Here the children were taught why manatees are endangered and why they shouldn't be harassed. The children were asked to identify the problems manatees faced in four pictures. At the fifth stop it was reading time. The children heard the story of Mary the Manatee, a Tale of Sea Cows. As one student read, another illustrated the story on a big felt board. Afterward the children answered questions about the story to win stickers. At table six, it was back to math, only this time it was graphing. The children colored the bar graphs and learned about numbers of manatee deaths over the last several years. The Rock Crusher children at table seven learned manatee facts. "What does a manatee like to eat? How slow does a manatee swim?" They also covered manatee body parts and "a little bit about the habitat," said Stefanie Wheeler. The fun activity accompanying the lesson was puppet making. Station eight had two parts. First the children went "fishing," hooking questions about manatees from the water, which was painted on a big piece of cardboard, and answering the questions for stickers. Part two was a chance to handle and examine actual manatee bones. At the last station, the children got down on the floor with full-sized drawings of an adult and a baby manatee. The lesson was in measuring, first estimating and then actual measuring using footsteps, paper clips and Popsicle sticks. While the third-graders were busy coloring, measuring and fishing, the sixth-graders were gaining a new appreciation for MacDonald, Crystal River's current teacher of the year. "It's fun, but it's tiring," Meghan Hirsch said about teaching. "Some of the kids won't listen to you," said Michael Sanchez. "It's fun working with them," said Heather Grider, "but they wear you out. I couldn't do this all day."
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