Bass in the Class

Mrs Novak,5th grade Science and Math teacher
(in yellow fleece on the right)

Bass In The Class is a program run by the Forest Preserve where school

 children would agree to raise smallmouth bass, to introduce to
 the cleaner streams. The  program allows children to be
 stewards of a real ecosystem.
Callahan's 5 th grade Science class is participating in the
"Bass in the Class Project"in partnership with the Du Page County 
Forest Preserve. His class raised  8 small mouth bass for the last
2 months. The kids switched off bringing feeder minnows
to feed the Bass.
 Bass are top line predators in Illinois waters. This project allows 
students to see how they behave, and how they catch their prey. 
Today the class went to Hidden Lakes Forest Preserve in
Glyn Ellen to release 6 of them (2 will remain in class
until the spring then they will be tagged and released)
The kids monitored the quality of the water by doing biological sampling.
 Students collect and identify benthic macro invertebrates
 from the DuPage River to determine the health of the water.
 Some of these organisms can tolerate a lot of pollution,
 while others cannot tolerate any. They work with 
naturalists in the river, and their findings are entered into
 the state's database.

The kids that chose to attend the release, met at school

 this morning to pick upthe fish.

 They all took turns monitoring the water temp

My guess is about 15 kids participated.

(not mandatory)
There were other schools also releasing their own Bass

The PTA gifted each grade this year with their own digital
video recorder..how awesome is that!

Callahan and Rosie were in charge of removing 1 cup

of water and replacing it with 1 cup of lake water. They

had to make sure the water temp didn't go down more than

 1-2 degrees or the fish would die of shock.

 Every 15 min they would do the same water exchange.

About 45 min later, when the bucket water temp was close enough

 to the lake temp, the Bass were released

This was originally for middle and high school students.
Callahan's science teacher Mrs. Novak heard about it years
ago and brought it to the 5th grade classroom. She had to
 apply for grants and take special classes to be certified.
 Now it is a rite of passage for 5th graders at
Pleasant Lane Elementary.

We were there maybe 2 hours, so the forest rangers set up
activities to keep the kids occupied when it wasn't their turn in the water

Each fish had a number on it that corresponded to a question

about the aquatic ecosystem. I am not exaggerating when I say

Callahan knew every single answer. He kept quiet until the other

 kids would give up...then pow! He whispered the answer

 in his friends ear and of course answered his own.

 This is not classroom material

example:

 Name a creature that lives on the bottom

 that can be right or left handed?

After everyone gave up, Cal answers

A Snail?

How does someone just know that? seriously?!

Needless to say Cal walked away with multiple packs of gum and

mints....prizes

Certain bugs found in certain waters

Blue cap bugs found in clean water, scales down to

red capped bugs means dirty yucky water (leeches)

making fishing lures

It was a perfect day for the bass release, warm and sunny.
When TJ did it 3 years ago it was cold and rainy.
I took some really cool pictures while playing with my
camera...will post later


some info taken straight from Mrs Novak's home page