Down at the Pond

I teach sixth grade life science in Comanche, OK. Within walking distance of our school is a city owned pond. I take students down to this pond to study a real working ecosystem. In this lesson students will sample the pond's population of fish. Each fish will be identified, measured, tagged, photographed, and released. Pictures are used to to create a pond species identification guide.

Day 1- Students are trained on how to throw a four foot cast net. The nets are used as the fish catching tool. I teach students to throw the nets on our playground. After giving basic instructions, I let the kids use the rest of their class time to practice throwing the nets.

Days 2-3- Students go to the pond and choose an area to throw their nets. For the entire class period students attempt to catch fish in their nets. Each fish that is caught is identified. To identify the fish students use an Oklahoma fish field guide. After identifying the fish the students measure and weigh the fish. Before releasing, students tag the fish using tags from fishtagger.com. Once the fish is tagged, students photograph the fish and release it.

Days 4-5- After students have sampled the fish in the pond all the information is brought back to the classroom. During days four and five students will graph different data that they have collected. Some ideas for graphing are: bar graphs representing the number of each species caught, correlation between species and length, and correlation between species and weight. Also, during days 4-5 students begin the construction of a pond fish species identification guide. This is done with the pictures that were taken of the fish.