They asked the city for a place to plant bee-friendly plants in the community. To experience the process of advocacy and to take action on an environmental problemĪfter discovering that bees need pesticide-free plants to thrive, the students decided it was important to write to their city government.To learn how scientists work to understand new and mysterious phenomena.To develop writing, editing, and critique skills.To learn about the unique elements of bee communication and behavior.To understand the role of bees in our ecosystem.The students were surprised to learn just how crucial bees really are to our food supply. Ingredients were traced back to see whether a food’s existence would be possible without bees. Second graders also conducted a lunch-time survey of all of the food that was served and brought to school in lunch boxes. In order to create the most educational plays, students critiqued each other’s work before performing their plays in front of an audience of parents and students. To teach others about bees, they wrote and performed plays about some aspect of what they had learned.

Students investigated the role of bees in our ecosystem and the various ways bees are being threatened. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for students to engage in the real science of an as yet unsolved problem. At the time that Marissa Adamas and Rhea Manguil first designed this project, scientists and environmentalists around the world were noticing this “mass death” phenomena among bees, and no one had discovered its cause.

Wetherholt by Marissa Adams