BRUNSWICK

During the month of May, the seventh grade students on the Jewell Island team at Brunswick Junior High School explored the question “How does the town of Brunswick interact with Casco Bay?”

This Interdisciplinary Community Education (I.C.E.) unit integrated the four core subjects of math, science, social studies and language arts and brought both the community into the classroom and the students out into the community. The project emphasized experiential learning.

The Casco Bay I.C.E. project started with a visit from Marine Patrol Officer Dan Devereaux. He presented a slide show and shared information about the watershed of Casco Bay and the marine resources that the town harvests from the water. He also emphasized the need to protect the bay from pollution.

The students also went out into the community. At Paul’s Marina, on Middle Bay, they identified marine life, measured air and water temperatures, learned about lobsters, and collected phytoplankton and zooplankton specimens.

On a visit to Maquoit Bay, the students were asked to record what they saw, smelled, heard and felt, and were then asked to write poetry based on these sensations.

Back in the classrooms students made scale drawings of lobsters, found the volume of lobster traps, and measured in fathoms. They wrote, edited and published poetry about the bay. They made maps of Brunswick and of the watershed in Brunswick. They studied phytoplankton and zooplankton, and they looked at the economics involved in earning a living on Casco Bay.

During the last week of the unit, the students directed their learning. While some students chose to write songs, brochures or newspaper articles about their learning experiences and of Casco Bay, other students made political art.

A final group made an imovie documenting the three-week project. On June 7, the community of parents, fellow students and friends gathered at BJHS to watch and listen as individuals and groups performed and presented original songs and student work.

BJHS Fun

BY ELEANOR R. HAGENBUCH

The seventh grade Jewell Island students at Brunswick Junior High have spent three weeks learning about the great town of Brunswick and how it interacts with Casco Bay.

To kick off the learning experience, Marine Patrol officer Dan Devereaux came to the school and showed the students some very important information about protecting the water from pollution.

To continue with the learning experience, the students drew a scale replica of a lobster using a scale factor of a quarter inch to 1 inch. After the students completed the lobster drawing, they were colored red.

To tie together the whole learning experience the students took a field trip to Paul’s Marina.

The students collected and identified marine life such as eels, clams, crabs, hermit crabs and mussels. Then, they measured the depth of the water and examined male and female lobsters. The field trip was a great success for the students and the teachers.

Scale drawings

BY JENNY DOIRON

The seventh-graders students of the Jewell Island team at Brunswick Junior High have just completed a unit about “How Casco Bay affects Brunswick.”

As a part of this unit the students drew lobsters to scale. Like a map, they had to make the scale on the side of the paper, draw the lobster bigger than the original picture, and then color the lobster. There were blue, red, and brown lobsters. Some people had a combination of colors. Each group of three to four students had the job of enlarging the picture of the lobster from a one-fourth inch to an inch scale. Two days later everybody had completed their drawings and they were hung in the seventh grade hallway.

This visual prepared us for the field trip to Paul’s Marina where the students learned the Maine regulations CORBIN BOUCHARD, Lillian Lowell, Sean Erwin, Sophie Blair and Dillon Cassidy visit at Paul’s Marina as part of their classes study of Casco Bay in May. for legal sized lobsters and many interesting facts about lobsters anatomy.

Exploring Casco Bay

BY SHAWN ROWE

Seventh-graders on the Jewell Island Team of Brunswick Junior High explored Casco Bay on May 13. The students visited Paul’s Marina and Maquoit Bay.

While at the marina, the students performed multiple scientific experiments, which included collecting water samples and taking air and water temperatures. They learned about the lives of lobsters, and the Maine size rules for lobsters. At the Castle house, they used Maquoit Bay as an inspiration to write poetry.

Returning to school, the students examined the water samples under microscopes and sketched what they saw. They also revised and edited their poems.

It was great way to end the field trip.

Casco Bay phytoplankton

BY ISABELLA POLS

The seventh grade Jewell Island Team at Brunswick Junior High has been learning about how Casco Bay interacts with Brunswick. In class they learned about phytoplankton, the water sheds of Casco Bay, lobsters, economics, volume and the land of Brunswick.

The kids kicked off the project in science class when they made a map of the Casco Bay watersheds. It included basins, ledges and currents.

The next big event was a field trip to Paul’s Marina where they learned about sea life and lobsters, and collected data. In one group the kids collected plankton using a plankton tow. The phytoplankton were brought back to class and looked at under microscopes.

The students also made booklets about the project. The books included microscope sketches and facts about 10 phytoplankton. The kids used a program called Phytopia to find information.

The BJHS seventh-graders had a great time learning about

Casco Bay.

Measuring volume

BY TRINITY TURCOTTE

At Brunswick Junior High, Jewell Island has been learning how to measure volume. During math class, the students went outside and learned how to calculate the volume of a cylinder. They measured a lobster trap that was the shape of half a cylinder.

To find the volume they measured the radius of the face of the trap. Next they measured the length of the trap. They used these measurements with the formula length times pi times radius squared divided by two, to find the total volume of the lobster trap. Using the actual lobster traps, the students then measured fathom with their armspan to simulate the distance required to set a string of traps.