Sign up kids to get their feet wet

April 8, 2016

Photo by Deborah Mercy. Anchorage students learn about what lives in the water during a day spent at Westchester Lagoon in spring 2015.

Alaska Sea Grant is inviting teachers to arrange science field trips this spring and register the trips at a new website, Get Your Feet Wet. Classes can visit a beach, stream, pond, marsh, the tundra or any wet environment.

The website offers teachers resources and tips for learning activities about Alaska’s marine and aquatic environments. After students participate in field trips, they can share highlights, post photos and add their schools to a map online.

So far, more than 40 teachers in 21 communities, from Akutan to Ketchikan, have registered their classes and described their field trip plans.

The Get Your Feet Wet event is part of the Alaska Seas and Watersheds K-12 curriculum. Last year, Alaska Sea Grant provided grants to seven school districts for teacher efforts to boost science, technology, engineering and math education in local environments. The goal is to provide learning through classroom and field trip activities. Another five grants are now in the works for more school districts.

Last year, every elementary student in Dillingham visited the beach where President Barack Obama appeared just a few months later. In Anchorage, more than 200 fourth-graders from four schools in the Chester Creek watershed learned about the salmon life cycle taking place in nearby streams.

Teachers can register their classes during April and May 2016 at https://seagrant.uaf.edu/marine-ed/workshops/2016/get-your-feet-wet/.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Marilyn Sigman, 907-274-9612, marilyn.sigman@alaska.edu