Environmental Education Grants for August and September

July 25th, 2011 by Sarah

Students sow seedlings in their classroom. What projects are you hoping grant money can help support in your classroom?

Finding funding to support environmental education can be a real challenge, and identifying applicable grants can be a hassle.  To help you kick-start the process of getting your classroom project off the ground, we here at Bay Backpack have identified some great grant opportunities that are about to fly by. Be sure to note the submission deadline or cycle opening dates, and good luck with your applications!

Toshiba Grants for Grades 6-12

Do you teach 6-12 science or math? Do you have a wish list of instructional equipment that will make learning more exciting for your students? If the answer is yes to these questions, Toshiba America Foundation would like to hear from you. Grade 6-12 grant applications for $5,000 or less are accepted on a rolling basis, throughout the calendar year. Grants requests of more than $5,000 are reviewed twice a year. Applications for grants of more than $5,000 are due August 1st and February 1st each year.

STEMester of Service Grant from YSA

Youth Service America and Learn and Serve America are looking to support middle school middle school educators in STEM subject areas in engaging their students in a Semester of Service. The $5,000 grant (that includes travel and training at YSA’s Youth Service Institute in Philadelphia in October) supports teachers and afterschool program facilitators as they engage local partners and guide students in addressing local needs through planning and implementing sustainable service projects that launch on Martin Luther King, Jr Day of Service (January 16, 2012) and culminate on Global Youth Service Day (April 20-22, 2012). YSA is seeking middle schools with large populations of disadvantaged youth, so to apply your schools must be located in one of the 19 states with highest dropout rates.  In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, these include Delaware, District of Columbia, and New York. Application Deadline: August 8, 2011

Maryland – Chesapeake Bay Trust Mini Grants for K-12 Environmental Education

Through the Mini Grant Environmental Education Program, the Trust seeks to increase student awareness and student involvement in the restoration and protection of the Bay and its local streams and rivers. Grant requests can be made for up to $5,000 for funding Watershed Education Experiences and Program, Service Learning and Action Projects, or Professional Development Workshops and Curriculum.  The Mini Grant Environmental Education proposal decisions will no longer be made on a rolling basis. Application Deadlines: August 12, 2011, and January 13, 2012 (5 p.m. on all deadline dates)

Target Field Trip Grants

Learning opportunities extend far beyond the classroom. But schools are finding it more and more difficult to bring students to museums, historical sites and cultural organizations. Field Trip Grants help give children these unique, firsthand learning experiences. As part of the program, each Target store will award three Target Field Trip Grants to K—12 schools nationwide—enabling one in 25 schools throughout the U.S. to send a classroom on a field trip. Each grant is valued up to $700. The Application Cycle opens on August 1, 2011.

Captain Planet Foundation Grants

These grants are intended to serve as a catalyst to getting environment-based education in schools, and inspire youth and communities to participate in community service through environmental stewardship activities. Grants are limited to $2,500 and preferential consideration is given to applicants who have secured at least 50% matching or in-kind funding for their program. Application Deadlines: September 31, 2011 and December 31, 2011.

Do you know about an upcoming grant that could support environmental education that is not included on this list? Feel free to share relevant funding information by commenting on our blog!

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Sarah Brzezinski works for the Chesapeake Research Consortium as the Chesapeake Bay Program's Fostering Stewardship and Education Workgroup Team Staffer. She also serves as the content manager of Bay Backpack.

How Does an Oyster Filter Water?

July 18th, 2011 by Sarah and Krissy

An adult oyster can filter up to 5 liters or 1.3 gallons on water an hour. That’s equal to 60 two-liter soda bottles a day, for just one oyster!  Historically, oysters could filter the Chesapeake Bay’s entire water volume in less than a week.  Today, with 1% of the oyster population left in the Chesapeake Bay, it would take oysters nearly a year.

So how do oysters do it?

Oysters are filter feeders, meaning they eat by pumping large volumes of water through their body.  Water is pumped over the oyster’s gills through the beating of cilia.  Plankton, algae and other particles become trapped in the mucus of the gills.  From there these particles are transported to the oyster esophagus and stomach to be eaten and digested.

Once the oyster removes all nutrients, indigestible material is expelled as “pseudofeces” through the anus.  The pseudofeces are expelled from the oyster’s shell via a rapid closing of valves. The expelled particles swirl through the water and resemble a smoke ring.  These smoke rings are an indication that oysters are filtering the water and doing what they are meant to do.

How Can I Teach About Oysters?

Now that you know a little bit about oysters and how they filter water, share the knowledge with your students! Here are some resources and lesson plans to help you do so:

  • Particulate Matters: Filtering Mechanism Laboratory – This dissection exercise from the Maryland Sea Grant utilizes dye to allow students to see how an oyster is able to filter materials from the environment and selectively process them as food or pseudofeces.
  • Hunting for Hemocytes: Forms Function, and Microscope Techniques – This lesson from the Maryland Sea Grant can be paired with the Particulate Matters lesson to expand on student microscope techniques and learn more about oysters.
  • Amazing Oyster – Younger students can learn about oysters through this lesson that helps them build a 3-D oyster pop-out reef!
  • Oystering on the Chesapeake Explorations 1-5 and Explorations 6-10 – Oystering on the Chesapeake, from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, offers teachers’ multi-disciplinary lesson plans to introduce students in grades 4 through 6 to the economic, environmental, and cultural significance of the oystering industry. Whatever lessons within the curriculum unit you choose, your students are sure to enjoy this exploration about the region’s oyster industry and the challenges facing the industry today.
  • Oysters and a Clear Bay – In this lesson, students will learn about the oyster population decline and regulations, and will try to “out-filter” an oyster in a lab activity.
  • Time-lapse: Oysters Filtering Water – This 44 second time-lapse video shows oysters filtering a tank of water.

Please refer to Bay Backpack’s searchable teacher resources section for more oyster-related lesson plans

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Sarah Brzezinski is the Chesapeake Bay Program's Fostering Stewardship and Education Workgroup Team Staffer. Krissy Hopkins is a former Chesapeake Bay Program Staffer and is currently pursuing her PhD in geology at the University of Pittsburgh.

“You are the Chesapeake Bay what???”

July 11th, 2011 by Kristin

The Chesapeake Bay Trust supports environmental education and field trips for Maryland students and teachers. Image courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Yea, I get that a lot. With so many organizations in the watershed created to help restore the Chesapeake Bay, I am not surprised when I meet people who have no idea what the Trust is. The funny thing is, they probably have heard of us and just don’t know it exactly what we do.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust was created in 1985, and is the only non-profit grantmaking organization in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. What does that mean? Basically we take the donations we receive and put them toward funding for projects related to restoration, community engagement, urban greening and environmental education. In 2010 alone, we funded grants that engaged 97,803 students and 5,098 teachers through our programs and granted $380,000 for environmental field trips.

We have two grant programs that are designed specifically to help teachers find the funding they need to allow their students to have meaningful watershed experiences in the Chesapeake Bay, and now to help fulfill the new Environmental Literacy requirement.

Our Mini grants are the most popular for teachers to apply for, and grants have ranged from $25 to $5,000. Most of this funding is applied to individual class field trips or schoolyard habitat installations, and have ranged from activities like native plantings to stormwater stenciling. We also have an Environmental Education grant which has three areas of focus. Environmental literacy, meaningful watershed experiences, and green schools are all funded by our education grants, and tend to be larger and are applied to whole schools or counties.

How are we able to do all of this? With help from people like you. How many people know what a Bay Plate is? You know those attractive looking license plates with the blue heron? Well when you purchase a Bay Plate for your car, you are donating directly to the Chesapeake Bay Trust and our grant programs. We also receive donations from the Chesapeake Bay and Endangered Species tax form check off, partnerships with businesses and corporations, and from individual donors like you. W are proud to say that 90% of all donations we receive go directly back into restoration and education for the Chesapeake Bay.

So yes, you probably have heard of us if you have purchased a Bay Plate or your child has gone on an environmental field trip in Maryland.  We just work behind-the-scenes to ensure the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort continues and that the Bay is around for people to enjoy for years to come.

If you would like to help support environmental education in the Chesapeake Bay, please visit our Causes page.

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Kristin Foringer is the Communications and Development Associate at the Chesapeake Bay Trust. She can be reached at 410-974-2941, ext. 113 or at kforinger@cbtrust.org. Kristin is also a former Environmental Management Staffer at the Chesapeake Bay Program.

NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office Launches New CBIBS Website, iPhone App

July 5th, 2011 by Kim and Bart

CBIBS buoy being deployed at the mouth of the Patapsco River.

The NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office has just launched its new website for the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System (CBIBS)! Now people looking for on-the-water observations from up and down the Chesapeake Bay can get data from the CBIBS website. In addition to a fresh new look, the site features streamlined navigation and offers users the often-requested ability to bookmark individual buoys’ data pages.

The data download and graphing sections have been revamped, giving site visitors more options as they explore CBIBS data. The site now includes a frequently updated “Buoy News” area to keep the community of CBIBS visitors up to date on the system, as well as a “Featured User” section that highlights how people around the watershed use information from CBIBS. Also, iPhone users can now get buoy data in a flash by using the Smart Buoys app available in the iTunes Store. The app was developed in partnership with the Chesapeake Conservancy. An app for Android users is also available; both apps are, of course, free.

The updated CBIBS website and the apps give students and teachers engaging and intuitive access to real-time Chesapeake Bay data. In particular, the new graphing capabilities give users the ability to graph water quality and weather data from any CBIBS buoy in the Bay for 30 days or more using the data graphing tool. Teachers can use this clearly presented data to teach about the relationships among water quality parameters and the effects of changes in certain parameters, such as dissolved oxygen, on the fish that swim throughout the Bay. When you visit the site, make sure to pick some interesting data to graph, hover your mouse over the graph, and you will see the exact measurement and time.

The new CBIBS site will also support Chesapeake Exploration, a brand-new collection of online activities for middle and high school students that brings the science of the Chesapeake Bay to life. These activities are scheduled to be available beginning late this fall. If you are interested learning more about Chesapeake Exploration, piloting the activities prior to the official release, or using the activities with your students, visit the Chesapeake Exploration website.

The latest updates on CBIBS are also posted on the CBIBS Facebook fan page—join us there!

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Kim Couranz is a Communications Specialist for the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office. Bart Merrick is an Education Coordinator for the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office.