Third Grade
Bucket Buddies Project

Making Movies with a Microscope

We brought a sample of the pond water back to the classroom. We used a microscope attached to our computer to look more closely at some of the creatures. We were able to record a movie of a damselfly nymph and a small snail. They were magnified with a 50x lens that makes them look 50 times larger than their actual size.

See the movie!

Graphing on the Computer

We used a computer program called Graph Club 2.0 to create a graph of the creatures we found at the pond. We used the identification pictures from the Bucket Buddies web site and then added some more pictures for additional creatures that we found.

Start by looking at a summary table that identifies the creatures and lists our data.

The Bucket Buddies Web Site

- Look at Our Bucket Buddies Report -

You can read our full report on the next page of this web site or you can go to the Bucket Buddies site to read it. This web page includes links to three photos from our visit in April 2004 to Black's Nook Pond.

- Other School Reports -

Compare our report and data with those of other schools in our state, in our country and in other parts of the world.

- Main Page of the Bucket Buddies Web Site -

See how we got started on this great project by going to the "Bucket Buddies" home page.

The Fogg Museum Connection

We had hoped to add information here about the connection between our visit to Black's Nook Pond and our collaboration with the Fogg Museum, an example of the integration of arts, science and technology in our third grade classrooms.

Special Thanks...

Marianne Dunne - Our trip to Black's Nook Pond was coordinated by Marianne, a science mentor teacher who helps teachers across the district. Marianne helped us in countless ways during our visit. She is the person who first told us about this great "Bucket Buddies" project and she kindly returned our classroom pond water sample to Black's Nook Pond after we were done.

Susan Agger - Susan is the volunteer coordinator of Maynard Ecology Center, a Cambridge Public Schools science classroom located at Black's Nook Pond. The center is located in Neville Place, an assisted living facility in Cambridge. Susan has a vast amount of experience "ponding" and teaching students about the environment and habitats in Cambridge.

Marcia Pertuz - Each student wrote a report about their pond water samples and then Mrs. Pertuz combined our words and data into one report to send to the Bucket Buddies web site. She took care to stir our classroom pond water sample once each day to keep it freshly aerated.

Ramona DeLeón - Assistance with translations to Spanish are being provided by our clever Spanish classroom teacher, Señora DeLeón.

Alison Sherman- The movie and graphing activities were set up for us by our fabulous volunteer, Alison, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education! She carefully prepared photos for the web site and pond creature images for us to import to the graphing program. We think she had fun picking up snails for the first time!

Carol Shields - We are also grateful to the project leader of the Bucket Buddies project at the Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. She kindly accepted three drafts of our pond water report and posted the final version to their website so quickly. She was also very responsive to our questions about the project. You can reach Carol Shields yourself using this link to her contact information.