Saturday January 12, 2013

NORTH ADAMS -- Twenty-seven fourth-graders at Greylock Elementary School were up to their gills in science lab work this week.

Friday concluded a five-day program called BioEYES that Williams College presented in the school. The biology program focuses on learning about and implementing a study on a fast-breeding species known as zebrafish.

Williams College first brought the program to Williamstown Elementary School four years ago. This year, the college expanded the program to include a pilot program at Greylock.

"Its amazing. Its different," said fourth-grade teacher Susan Candiloro. "The kids have been very engaged and asked excellent questions this week. Not to mention theyve been responsible about taking care of the fish."

Candiloro and fellow teacher Paul Narotski combined classrooms this week so Williams neuroscience professor Martha Marvin and students from her winter study course could run the BioEYES workshop with the kids.

BioEYES is a science education program for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, developed by Philadelphia-based neurobiologist Steven Farber and educator Jamie Shuda.

During the week, Marvin and the Williams College students helped the elementary school students to formulate hypotheses about genetics and then test their hypotheses by mating a male and female zebrafish. Zebrafish breeding is a model system for studying vertebrates and neuroscience

On Friday, the fourth-graders put their developing fish -- some creatures given names like "Squishy," "Squirmy" and "Nemo" -- under microscopes brought in by the college. Since zebrafish embryos are transparent, the students were able to observe organs, a heartbeat and blood flow in their specimens.

Audible reactions from the kids ranged from "whoa," to "eww" to "weird."

Excerpt from:
Focusing young eyes on biology