After working with the students and becoming more familiar with oil spills as a group we feel very happy with how the project turned out. The third grade students at Glenside were very excited to learn about this matter and try to extract the oil themselves from the bins. They were able to learn how hard this is, and how much work goes into the clean up of oil spills. A lot of the students, including ourselves, were surprised what tools extracted the oil the best. After the students took time to play with the water and experiment with the tools, they found the sponge to work best. Of course, this technique would not work in the ocean, but we did explain to them the actual techniques they use when millions of gallons of oil are spilled into the water. As a group we noticed how interested students were in environmental matters and they want to learn more in order to help the world they are growing up in. We provided rocks in the bins which we told students to envision as “habitats”. They were able to pick up and play with the rocks as we explained that these habitats were animals homes. Their homes are affected by the oil spills as well, and do not feel anything close to normal while being covered in oil. This was surprising too many students and another aspect we were able to teach them during this assignment. As Penn State Berks students we learned the importance of teaching the younger generations about these matters so they can bring them home to their families and all work together to make a difference in our world together.
On April 18th we presented our poster to the class and other Penn State Berks Students. During this time they were able to ask us questions and look at the service project we had completed. This was a great way to showcase our work to the campus and also inform them about the matter. Many people are not well informed about oil spills so by allowing us to stand near our poster and have it on display we feel that we made a difference and people left more knowledgeable about oils spills. As a team we were very pleased with the ECAP project and we were able to learn a lot from the different groups. We learned about climate change, rising sea levels, blast fishing, and about many more issues. It was a great experience to be able to learn from our class and be able to teach others as well. We all need to come together and make eachother aware of the different issues going on in our environment today and we all did that very well.
Thats all for now! Thanks for reading!
~ The Glenside Genius Scientists
I think it’s very important to keep these sort of issues, such as oil spills, prevalent and in the minds so that we are prepared to deal with them again because we’ve seen just how horrifying the effects can be.
Im glad you guys liked how your project turned out. It seems like the kids were able to take something away from this project.