It is a trip that Odenville Intermediate School teacher Kelly Wright has organized for the past seven or eight years and fifth grade science students have the chance to go again come November. The trip is to Key Largo to visit a marine lab as part of a science project.“While there, the students learn all about the different environments,” Wright said. “They learn about coral reefs, sea grasses and other interesting things. We have classes and then they get the chance to go and snorkel. That way, everything they see they know what they are seeing. They identify everything they see and are amazed at all these creatures they get out of the rocks.”
Wright said they also get the chance to go on boats at night and do astronomy lessons. She said the students don’t realize how much they are learning.
“The parents are just as excited about going as their children sometimes,” Wright said. “
Wright said TCI in Moody and Odenville Furniture gave donations to help provide two scholarships to Key Largo this year.
Wright usually invites different schools throughout the county to go with them.
“The marine lab has a waiting list to be able to get a spot, so otherwise these schools would not be able to go, or they would get times when no one wants to be in the water,” Wright said. “Moody Middle School has gone with us the last two years. Also, SCCHS principal Brian Terry, said anyone in the high school who wants to go could do so this year.”
The cost is $525 and that includes transportation (Alabama Limo bus), food and lodging. “A lot of times students think we stay in a motel or hotel, but we stay right at the marine lab — eat and sleep there,” Wright said. “Once we enter the compound Tuesday morning, we don't leave it until it is time to go home. We have activities from breakfast until 10 p.m. every night. There is a lagoon that we get to swim in that has the Jules Verne underwater hotel in it. We study seagrass Ecology the first day and then go to the seagrasses where they learn how to snorkel if they already don't know how because it is very calm.”
Wright said she actually has had a lot of kids who have gone that do not know how to swim, so that is not a requirement for the trip.
Also on the trip, students have the invertebrate diversity lab where they do the rock shake and have a coral reef lecture and mangrove lecture about what they will be seeing the next day. The next morning they go out to different coral reefs until lunch. after lunch we go out to the mangroves and snorkel.
After supper, they have a field identification of reef fish lecture and go out on the boats and do an astronomy lesson and plankton tow. The next day after breakfast, they go back out to different coral reefs and snorkel again until lunch.
“We usually leave by about 1 p.m. that day,” Wright said. “When we leave, we either go to the Miami Marine Aquarium or go to the Everglades and do the fan boat tours. This year, I am going to try something new and either go to Parrot Island or Monkey Island. When we leave there, we go to Bayside Mall in Miami and go to the Hard Rock Cafe. The kids love this. There are so many things we do that a lot of these kids wouldn't be able to experience on their own. We have been swimming with sting rays, nurse sharks, turtles and barracudas. We have seen dolphins, manatees and their baby - all types of great stuff. I have had kids that have come back and actually decided later on that they are going into the field of Marine Biology because of this trip. I have kids that are in high school that still come back to me to talk about it.”
This year the trip is scheduled for Nov. 3-7, 2008.
Students need to send a $100 deposit to Odenville Intermediate School over the summer. They can send a check made out to OIS — attention Kelly Wright, Key Largo, PO Box 670.
“We only take one bus so it is first come first serve,” Wright said.
