MAHOPAC – At the back of a Mahopac classroom sat a tank filled with tiny brown trout. They moved softly, almost rhythmically through the water.
Suddenly all the trout dove to the bottom.
The teacher asked, “What’s going on?”
Students chimed in, “There must be food at the bottom,” or “Maybe the water temperature changed.”
The teacher is Scott Rizzo. The class is Living Environment and the method of teaching? It is inquiry-based. Rizzo wanted the students to come up with their own questions and ways to answer them. He wanted them to think critically. To analyze and evaluate information gathered by observation and reasoning.
The trout raised as part of the Trout in the Classroom program were a staple of Fulmar Road’s fourth grade classrooms every year.
On Wednesday it was time for students to release them into the wild at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation.
