The weather was cooperating when Norman Bird Sanctuary's educators taught third-graders at Melville School to investigate, observe, dip into, catch, sort and classify living species at our local watershed adjacent to their school, Melville Pond! 

Funds granted by NBNRR (Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve) and our local Portsmouth Public Education Foundation (PPEF), allowed me to organize a trip for all third-graders to the pond.

Educators taught students where to look for live specimen and how to classify plants and animals found.  Last fall our students learned about the effects of contaminating pollutants from runoff and its adverse effects on our watershed and bay through a program from Save The Bay (I posted a blog about that program last fall).

Students were elated they were when they found a very rare specimen in the pond! Norman Bird Sanctuary said this small animal is only present when a body of water is very clean and free of toxins and pollutants! My hope is that these students will take away what they learned about pollution from runoff, and in the future, continue to keep the environment as clean as we currently have right here in our small community by the sea!