by nadav reich
Classroom Aquaponic window farm with 4th grade
9:46 pm in Education by nadav reich
I’ve recently finished my second windowfarm project with fourth grade elementary school children, and I’ve discovered an incredible new world. After seeing Britta Riley’s TED lecture, I figured I really should try and build an aquaponic windowfarm system with the children I teach.
The difference this time was that we’ve decided to go at it as a project based course (PBL). 14 meetings, 75 minutes each. We’ve started by planning the system together, acquiring the materials, building the system- including a wooden hanging rack, taking care of the plants, the fish, and the pumps. After the system was set up we’ve started following the plants’ growth. We’ve had 2 columns running to a fish aquarium with 5 goldfish, and one column with a bucket with water and fertilizer. Each column had different types of plants to compare their growth rate. The children were in charge of everything – taking care of the windowfarm, following the farm as it evolves (plants & fish), documenting the process, and finally presenting all they did to their parents over a glass of farm-grown mint tea .
It was an incredible success.
I’d love to share with you some of the insights
Nadav
This is fantastic; it’s great that you’re exposing young students to this field. How did the kids react to this project? What were their favorite aspects, and their least favorite, in your opinion?
Kudos to you and your students. I’d like to realize something similar with my fifth grade students. Would you recommend a hydroponic or aquaponic system for a novice? Thanks.
Can’t wait to see more detail about your project’s success. From the initial pics it looks like you had success with using fish fertilized nutrient solution. Is that correct?
I think that starting with a hydroponic system is easier. The less variables you have in a system the less problems you’ll encounter. Problems such as fish mortality, pumping problems and nutrient problems can happen ,and usually do.
I think it’s better to start off with a hydroponic system – and maybe upgrade it to aquaponic after a while – once you’ve experimented with it yourself at home and acquired some more knowledge about aquaponics.
Without a doubt. We ran 2 columns on the fish tank and one with the fertilizer. Over a month and a half period there was no absolute advantage to one over the other – both were good
The kids were into it mostly. I believe that about 75% of the class were active and participitaed in the work done – not the best but a good start. I think it is very important for each kid to know what’s his job within the project’s frmaework – when he comes to class he knows what he should do. The fish was their favorite by far – everybody wanted to feed them, see how they are doing and so on…
I find it hard to say what aspects were less favored by the kids in general, becuase almpst everyone managed to find a niche within the project – but not everyonre always had a task to do – so sometimes it was necessary to create work for them from thin air to compensate for the “dead” times of some groups while the others were working.
What did you do during the 75 minutes when the window farm was built?
the children built it and i was helping them, especially with the drilling, cutting etc. it took about 4 75 minutes classes