Tips on Using Educational Aquariums In The Classroom

How an Aquarium Will Make Kids Smarter

First a teaching aquarium in the classroom energizes learning, it prods learners to get involved because the tank is not an inanimate object it is a living, breathing organism, full of fellow creatures who just by their very existence teach learners about life in an ecosystem covered by water. It is easy to engage a human being in caring about the welfare of their fellow creatures, their life cycles, what they eat, how they protect themselves and even how they pass away. All of this will engage learners in a real way that a computer or online game can only dream of. Once you have observed the "life under the sea", you are invested in its well-being and it's ultimate successful survival.

Math and The Aquarium.

The educational aquarium is also good for teaching math skills. From the little

learners who are just learning how to count. to the older learners who are learning about algebra, geometry or physics, all can be accommodated and engaged by using an educational aquarium. Lessons to learn simple math can be devised to count the "creatures" in the tank, or to group them together into similar groups, or to add and subtract them from the tank, or to learn the percentages of the population of your tank, from what percentage of the total population consists of sea stars. The applications are as limitless as the imaginations of our brightest educators. As for older learners, you can determine how much water is best for the tank, the percentage of salt in the water, the life span of certain sea creatures, how they function outside and inside. How to measure angles and recognize geometric shapes in nature. All of this can be developed by using an educational aquarium in the classroom to enhance and teach math skills.

Social Studies and The Educational Aquarium

There are an unlimited number of ways that the aquarium used in an educational setting can help inspire learning social studies. You can have learners research public policies and laws which have impacted not only the health of the oceans but the health and well-being of the many fish and creatures that are harvested from our oceans every year. Students can easily understand the positive and negative aspects of a public policy as it applies to the under water world that is a part of their educational experience every day of their learning. They can look back at historical figures and connect many of them to the oceans and the activities on or around them. From fishing to trade. You can also relate the treatment of the oceans animals by the governments around the world today. Policies are made that will have a direct impact on the ocean world that learners will become an interactive part of. There are so many different types of lessons that having a tank available for the education of kids, it would be a resource without end.

Having an educational aquarium in the classroom would be a benefit to all curriculum's and all ages of learners. There is no way that we can limit the use of such a valuable educational tool to just one of the classes that learners encounter in school when it teaches so much about everything. Once you start to investigate the true value of having an aquarium in the classroom, and see all of the applications that it has, you will be looking to add one to your school system as quickly as you can, because the increased enthusiasm for learning and desire to find out more about math, science, history or foreign languages will be mind-blowing.


Article Source: Jonathan Hilton