Lanoka Harbor School Goes 'All-Out' For MARE Family Night

The halls and classrooms of the  were decorated from top to bottom on Thursday evening with colorful displays, bulletin boards and projects, all in recognition of its annual MARE Night Event.

MARE Night is the culmination of a school-wide unit study on marine life and its related environments, according to Principal Rosemarie Bond. The acronym stands for “Marine Awareness Resources Education”.

“It’s a strand of our science curriculum, where the students examine marine life from different aspects at each grade level,” Bond said. “It’s a hands-on, total immersion experience that features research, projects, field trips and guest speakers.”

In reference to said speakers, Bond explained that members of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary were present for the event, and providing seminars on marine life in one of the building’s rooms.

“We’ve been doing the MARE night for about 15 years, and it’s traditionally been one of our major nights of the school year; it's something we go all-out for. We always get a great turnout of students, parents and former students, and it’s very nice to see all of them,” Bond said.

Supervisor Ann Dezendorf explained that each grade level was studying a different habitat related to marine life, with kindergarten classes learning about ponds, first-grade classes examining tide pools and the rocky seashore, second-graders learning about the sandy beach, third-graders checking out wetlands, and fourth-graders looking at shallow bays and the kelp forest.

It was also pointed out that fifth-graders at the other elementary schools in the district participating in the MARE program are studying the open ocean.

Bond agreed that the way the curriculum was designed for each grade level represented a “symbolic progression” in that as each class level ascended in number, the closer their study unit was located to the sea. Dezendorf also commented on the learning connections for this study unit which extend outside the school district.

“This is something we’re continuing to learn about after MARE Night. We have an ongoing relationship with the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, and we’re always updating the curriculum. It’s truly been wonderful,” said Dezendorf.

Bond also pointed out some of the exhibits in each room, such as crayfish in the third-grade classrooms, a homemade “pond” in the kindergarten rooms, and noted that original songs written and recorded by the students about marine life could be heard playing in the library.

Classrooms displayed projects made by the schoolchildren, such as homemade dioramas of various sea animals like an oyster toadfish, Japanese spider crab, diamondback terrapin and sand shrimp, Powerpoint presentations, artwork related to the marine life theme or the specially-constructed pond in Karen Moscufo’s kindergarten room.

“We spent four weeks learning about the pond environment,” Moscufo indicated.

Other projects undertaken by her kindergarten class included sink-or-float experiments, a fill-er-up lesson on capacity and another experiment where students constructed boats and had to guess how many pennies would cause their craft to sink.

“We think of it as hands-on, project-based learning,” said Moscufo. “The final product is the outcome, as the students learn individually and put it all together.”

Moscufo said that the students had not seen the finished pond display during the school day, but was anticipating seeing their reactions to it when they visited with their families during MARE Night.

“I’m always excited when they come by and see the final product,” she commented.