Future Environmentalists….

5th graders adopt a Piping Plover

by Larissa Smith, Biologist/Volunteer Manager

This week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of 5th grade students at the Ocean City Intermediate School. The group of 44 students are in Mrs. Rosander’s science class.   Over the holidays the students earned money for a charity and this year they chose to adopt  a piping plover for their classroom through the CWF Adopt a species program.

As part of the adoption they received a classroom visit by a CWF staff person, which was me. I spoke about NJ’s rare wildlife and of course their adopted species the Piping Plover. The students were already very knowledgeable about NJ Endangered and Threatened species. One of their class assignments was to write an essay or draw a picture of one of NJ’s E & T species. For extra credit they could do both and those were entered in the Species on the Edge Art & Essay contest.  The students had a lot of great questions for me and I think there are some future environmentalists in the group!