Trout In School... So Cool!

Time is escaping me...the students here at Lack Tuscarora Elementary have been busy becoming published authors! By the end of January, we hope to ship our book "Trout In School ... So Cool!" to Scholastic for publishing. The students have worked very hard on this project. It has been a great motivation for improving our writing skills. I am very proud of them. I will have a copy of the book available at our curriculum fair in May if anyone is interested please feel free to stop in and check it out.

Our fish are doing well so far. Of course we have lost fish through the process of development, but we seem to have settled in at a tankful of around 70-80 fry. The students really enjoy feeding the fish. However, we have limited our feedings to twice a week to help keep the water quality less troublesome. The more we feed the fish, the more waste they produce which leads to more difficulty in maintaining good parameters for the water quality so in this case less is definitely more. We have lean and healthy trout here at Lack!

As soon as I ship our book off, it will be time to begin the planning process for our release day. It is scheduled for May 17, 2012. Through the writing process, it was evident how much the release day means to the students which fuels my desire to begin the planning. Last summer, I took a course offered by the Leaf Pack Network. I am eager to incorporate some ideas from the workshop into our release. I also look forward to working with the community members from DCNR and the Conservation District to plan another fun filled educational day at Karl B. Gus. Hoping all will go well and we can keep enough trout alive to release again this year.

This year we have Juniata High School again participating in the program. Unfortunately, they are experiencing some of the difficulties we had last year with equipment failure. They lost all of their trout. We may be shipping some of our fish to them for adoption. We look forward to having them share in our release day again. Our elementary students really enjoy sharing the day with the older students. It is also a great opportunity for the older students to share what they have learned throught the program with the younger students.

Thompsontown Elementary School has also had a difficult first year in the program losing most of their fish also due to equipment difficulties. Mrs. Grundon has fallen in love with this program as I have. I do not believe her difficulties will keep her from seeing the benefits especially on the release day.Keep us in your thoughts as we hope to have some trout to relase in May. We have been blessed so far, but have a long way to go until May.