Getting AquaGrove Ready for the New School Year
Summer days are coming to a close soon and most schools will be starting the new 2023-24 school year in the coming weeks. For most teachers, they are already well into the planning and classroom preparation phase in anticipation of meeting a new set of students.
When it comes to AquaGrove, we have noticed that schools use a variety of approaches when managing their systems during summer months. Some have been able to continue operating the system with the help of student volunteers, interns, and/or summer learning programs; while for others, summertime was a period where they emptied and cleaned their systems with intentions of restarting it with a new set of students for the Fall session.
Whichever method you used for maintaining your AquaGrove when students were on vacation, now is the time to ramp up a new and refreshed program for incoming students. Based on the discussions between AquaGrove and its partners in education, there are certainly preparations underway by educators to either continue or restart their AquaGrove systems and programs.
If you are an educator who used this time to clean and empty your system, you may be looking to restart from the beginning. With this step often requiring a little refresher, AquaGrove encourages growers to revisit their Starter Guides that came with the system, as well as take a look at our previous article: “Getting Started with AquaGrove”. The article provides a brief overview of the steps to get the system started properly and offers some direction and an idea of the time needed to have the system ready for student activity.
Once you have derived a plan for having your system properly prepared for adding fish/plants, you will be facing the most exciting part of the process: engaging students. The Learning Guide that comes with the AquaGrove system includes some useful lessons, as well as links to other resources that offer a myriad of activities and topics that teachers can cherry-pick and customize to their students’ ages, skill levels and areas of interest. It can be used by those designing or improving upon an educational program, by either directly incorporating some of the resources into their plan, or using them as a model to develop their own educational materials.
No matter where you or your students are in the AquaGrove learning process, you are not alone, and the above referenced resources are a great place to start preparing for the new school year and a brand-new harvest. As AquaGrove supports its partners in education, more tools, links, and resources will continue to be shared so that students and teachers can learn and grow together, successfully.