Looking Past the Classroom - Our Education Programs | Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center

Aquarium staff member holds blue-tongued skink for class of children to touch.

04 Aug

As part of our mission to inspire a more sustainable future, the Virginia Aquarium's School & Youth Education team offers a variety of science education programs for local students in preschool, elementary , middle , and high school . These programs are available for public and private schools, daycares, and other learning facilities, with programs covering a range of science topics compliant with the Virginia Standards of Learning .

Within the past two years, our School & Youth Programs team has revamped our catalog, revitalizing existing programs to be more relevant for current students while also adding new courses with expanded topics of study. Team supervisor Rachael, outreach program coordinator Dan, and school, youth, and camps coordinator Alyssa (pronounced like "Aleesha"!) collaborated extensively to update the program offerings and better accommodate the community.

"When it came to creating lessons, we all have different specialties and interests and backgrounds," said Rachael. "So we hone in on each other's ideas and bouncing ideas off of each other."

Alyssa agreed, "It's hard to make a program that's going to cover everything it needs to over different age groups and SOL levels unless everyone puts in their two cents."

Elementary schools are the Aquarium's largest education clientele, particularly with 3rd and 4th grade classes, and the most popular programs are the ones that focus on either sea turtles or the Chesapeake Bay, the latter of which has science-based SOLS directly tailored for local students. Some of the most impactful moments students enjoy are meeting live animals, or conducting field research outdoors, including collecting samples from nature. These interactive experiences are a major draw for educators, as certain opportunities we offer cannot be replicated in a school classroom due to funding, or even federal permits needed to possess "biofacts" (i.e. naturally-sourced artifacts used to teach with, such as sea turtle shells or bones).

"We've focused on making our programs very hands-on and station-based to personally interact with biofacts and experiments," said Dan.

Rachael mentioned that students "get really excited when they see the inside of an oyster, or touch a squid."

"Or see the inside of a turtle shell." added Alyssa. "The teachers say it's one thing to read it in a book, but it's so different when they get to touch it."

The general theme across our programming is conservation, rather than just marine science. However, the team also offers cross-curricular classes, combining science education with other course subjects.

"We've had classes meet a live animal, and then go out to the [gallery] floor and do paintings and drawing," Rachael added. "I've seen English and language arts classes come in and practice research, because we have so much scientific data on our signs that the kids come in and practice researching information. You could even bring in history because we have a whole room dedicated to geologic history and time scale."

The Education team values expanding their reach to as many school and youth groups as possible, including facilities with stricter budgets. The Access Aquarium program offers grant funding to Title I Schools which, if awarded, covers 50% of the student costs for certain Aquarium programs.

Field trips are an obvious favorite among students and educators, with some groups traveling from as far as New York to visit. But while the Aquarium is a hotspot for field trips, we also provide alternative learning paths for students outside of our facility through outreach programs, virtual learning classes, and Suitcase Science reservations.

Outreach Programs

Schools and other facilities can book an outreach program with an Aquarium educator, who visits the facility and conducts a show-and-tell experience with specialized lesson plans and Aquarium biofacts to teach the lesson. This program option works well for groups that cannot easily visit for a field trip, such as schools outside the Hampton Roads area, classes with special needs students, or senior assisted living communities. Programs usually last about an hour, except for toddler and preschool classes, who enjoy half-hour experiences.

Some of our programs focus on topics like sea turtles, squid, snails, and other wildlife, while others focus on fossils or local wetlands. We also offer live animal encounters, where students can meet one of our Animal Ambassadors such as terrapins, lesser Madagascar hedgehog tenrecs, or snakes. According to Dan, the team focuses on interaction as much as possible, even with programs that are more presentation-based. They encourage kids to participate in demonstrations, divide them into groups for hands-on activities, and focus their time as much as possible on any Animal Ambassadors they bring to the event, who apparently enjoy these "field trips" of their own to local schools.

"The animals really seem to have a good time with it, especially for the tenrecs and terrapins," Dan mentioned. "It's a lot of sights and sounds and counts as part of their enrichment."

Most of our field trip programs are available as outreach programs, offering some equity for schools to experience the Aquarium even if they cannot visit our campus. To accommodate the comfort of our animals, our outreach team will travel up to one hour from the Virginia Aquarium to conduct programs.

Virtual Learning

If field trips and outreach programs extend slightly beyond a class's budget, virtual learning programs can offer a similar experience at a lower price. All field trip and outreach programs are available as virtual learning programs as an even more cost-effective option for science education. Participants only need a standard virtual call setup to conduct any of our in-person lesson plans online with their students. These programs are well-suited for schools outside of our outreach program range, such as those in western Virginia and beyond.

"Obviously, we can't do much station-based learning with the virtual programs, so it's more of the biofacts, presentation, and animals," Dan explained. "But for people for whom distance or cost is a factor, it's still a great way to talk to an Aquarium educator and bring them to your classroom. It's something we started doing during COVID and we just kept doing them after."

Virtual programs also offer a more tailored experience for teachers, since our team can customize programs for different topics a class may be learning. For instance, Dan has taught a class on plastic pollution in the ocean - a concentration they studied in grad school - as well as one on ocean robotics for a local robotics team building a shark-inspired robot to clean the ocean with.

And yes, Animal Ambassador meet-and-greets can be booked virtually through the Aquarium. Though the animals might not understand what a computer is or what's on the screen, they still get enrichment from the contact and working with our educators!

Suitcase Science

Our most affordable science education option is our Suitcase Science rental program, which has seen an increase in popularity this year. At just $30 for a two-week reservation, we offer six SOL-focused suitcases for rent, packed full of lesson plans, activity ideas, and materials needed to teach students of varying ages. Since the suitcases are mailed to users, more distant schools can use them to interact with biofacts that the public would not have the permits or opportunity to explore otherwise, like real sea turtle shells. The six themes include:

Metamorphosis and Life Cycle Sequencing
Properties of Water, the Water Cycle, and Water Conservation
Animal Adaptations for Feeding and Defense
Predator-Prey Relationships, Food Webs, and Feeding Adaptations
Sea Turtle Life History, Research, and Conservation Issues
Weather and Climate Systems, Impacts, and Solutions for a Changing Climate

Although most of the team's classes are SOL-based, they are looking forward to collaborating in the future with teachers, scout groups, and other members of the public to provide additional offerings outside of the SOL structure. They already offer programming for adult groups, and want to adapt their course structures to accommodate other demographics such as private school students or early learners. For more information, check out our resources for Schools & Educators , visit our free Teacher Open House , or contact our Education team directly to inquire about programs!