Unique project is restarted at the Aquarium.
The “Educational Environment” project was resumed on September 19, 2018. Every Wednesday of the school year the Primorsky Aquarium will be open only for organized groups of preschool and school children and university students.
According to Natalia Miroshnikova, Head of The Environmental Education Center at the Primorsky Aquarium, the most popular part of the project is “Lesson at the Aquarium” for school children of all ages. A total of 13 lessons have been developed on the basis of the Federal State Educational Standards for the Basic General Education. Since primary school children are among the most active participants of the “Educational Environment”, the number of lessons for them have been increased to five.
The “Lesson at the Aquarium” project gives pupils the opportunities to go deep into the topics slightly studied at school and learn more about the world of microorganisms or the evolution of life on Earth. In addition, children can gain profound knowledge about the ecology, biodiversity, geography and economics of the fresh and saline water bodies of the Russian Far East which are well represented at the Aquarium. The project includes lessons on Biology, Science and Geography. They are carried out at the exhibits where children can see animals in the conditions similar to the ones of their natural habitats, watch their behavior and communicate with them. Such visual teaching methods help pupils to absorb the new information effectively. All classes are free of charge but pre-registration is required.
“Each lesson contains a compulsory ecological component. We explain to our pupils how diverse and fragile the natural environment can be and tell them how to protect the aquatic environment and its inhabitants”, says Olga Shevchenko, Head of the Research Support Office of the Primorsky Aquarium. “The “Lesson at the Aquairum” project was initiated in 2016 when Olga Golodets, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, visited the opening ceremony of the Primorsky Aquarium”, Olga Shevchenko adds. “She noted a high educational potential of the Aquarium and proposed to conduct classes for school children here. We took the “Lesson at the Museum” project implemented in Moscow and Saint Petersburg as an example. The first classes were held in January 2016, and now our project, the most large-scale of the similar ones by other Russian museums, zoos and aquariums, begins its third year of operation”.
The project is unique for the Far Eastern region where museum lessons are not practiced, and therefore it is very popular. Every Wednesday of the school year about 500 visitors (mainly school children) from Vladivostok, different towns and settlements of Primorsky and Khabarovsky krais attend the Aquarium. The high demand for the “Lesson at the Aquarium” has resulted in creation of the “Educational Environment”, a large educational project that includes entertaining excursions for preschool children and overview tours for children from orphanages, remedial schools and medical rehabilitation centers. Besides, on Wednesday the Aquarium serves as a teaching ground for university students specializing in such fields as Biology, Ecology, Design and foreign students studying the Russian language.
The project has grown in scale due to close partnership between the Aquarium and the Municipal Education Department of the city administration and the Department of Education and Science of Primorsky Krai. To date, almost 20,000 children have taken part in the “Educational Environment”.