Hi - after meaning to get round to this for ages I've finally been able to ignore the normal workload (paternity leave comes in useful !) in order to spend some time this week to get a dedicated website up and running for the WTT's "Mayfly in the Classroom" activities.

This programme uses the activity of visiting a local stream, kick-sampling the invertebrates and keeping some of the resultant mayfly nymphs (of virtually any species) for the kids to grow in home-made aquaria in the classroom.

It is dirt cheap to run and the mayfly cultivation and release is really just a jolly good excuse to learn about all aspects of healthy rivers (including sensitive fish species and surrounding land-use etc.).

Everything you should need is on the site (including a link to the Riverfly Partnership pages where you may be able to find out the nearest Anglers Monitoring Initiative group to help you get hold of some mayfly nymphs if required).

Go here and let me know what you think: www.mayflyintheclassroom.org - Home

Cheers

PG

Looks good - well done

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The general content looks great, well done.

The hibiscus and oxe daisy flower pictures don't do anything for me and should be replaced with the site's heading.

Somewhere, I think there ought to be some pictures and, better still videos of emerging mayfly and the various types.

I appreciate that you are aiming it at teachers and those that might promote projects to schools but it is not child friendly - a page for the school children at some stage in the future would help.

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"The sun was so delightfully warm, and the stone, which had been sitting in it for a long time, was so warm, too, that Pooh had almost decided to go on being Pooh in the middle of the stream for the rest of the morning."

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Fair point on the header banners - a by-product of going for a fast solution involving pre-fab templates (to avoid me having to spend ages learning about web design). I'll be asking the hosting company for some more appropriate banners in the future.

As for videos, I'll have to link to external sites rather than host them on that current domain (will wait until I can get the appropriate code to make a photo into a "button" for that link).

Think I'll steer clear from the kids contributions just at the moment since, as you say, this is really aimed at getting delivery partners to the point where they can run MIC projects in local schools. Don't want to dilute the message too much.

Cheers for feedback (and for email)

PG

Agree with CF re the flowers but thats a minor. Otherwise as a teaching aid very good, only to be expected of course.

Hows the sleep deprivation?

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Its good spelling but it wobbles
and letters get in the wrong places.

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Will be putting it into practice in a classroom in the Spring. Thanks Paul.

Kev

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Very good Paul, are you going to do a bloodworm/buzzer canal version for the inner city kids?

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Looks really good Paul. I am guessing it is aimed at primary level / KS2. I wonder if you have had thoughts about secondary or at least KS3?

~Dave

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Dave Wiltshire

River Fly Box

Hi Paul
There is some quality content there, ...can I ask who the website is aimed at? Pupils or teachers?
Best
D

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"A homeward tramp thro' mist wrapped night,
With heart and creel in common light,
Complete content, the day has brought it,
They fished for pleasure - and they caught it"

P F Morgan
taken from the catch record book at Llanthony Hotel, Honddu Valley, Aug 1942

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Hi all - will try to answer separate things in turn (and cheers for kind feedback).

The site is aimed at either teachers or any community group (including local angling clubs looking to connect local kids and their parents to their rivers and get them to be seen as valuable). The main purpose of the site is to provide anyone who is interested with the means (and links to support) to be able to run a Mayfly in the Classroom for themselves from scratch.

The current "activities" are aimed mainly at younger kids (primary 6 and below) - however the first time that we ran MIC, it was with year 8 and 9 secondary school kids. With the older groups there are lots of opportunities to link to different areas of the curriculum - including art, literature, chemistry, biology, technology, geography (including water cycle/water treatment). There is a ton of background information in the big "Mayfly Facts and Figures" document (as well as loads of links to internet references).

However, through time it would be great if various work/activity sheets that different groups who run MIC come up with can be uploaded to the site for others to use as well.

One activity that we did with the older kids was a discussion on the ethics/philosophy of conservation - based around Warren Slaney's favourite quote "The true meaning of life is to plant the trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit". We also had the same group divided into "town planners" and "friends of Endcliffe Park" conservationists for a role play discussion during one of their assemblies. The debate was whether to build a hospice on the site of the stream that they collected their mayflies from.

The cool thing about it is that you can attach whatever messages/issues to the core activities that you like. For example, in Staffordshire schools (where lots of the kids were the next generation of local farmers) we concentrated on good slurry management (e.g. the splitting of clean roof rainwater drainage from yard runoff containing slurry, siting field entrances and feeding stations to avoid obvious routes of runoff into the river etc.).

PS. sleep is not too bad whilst I'm off work and can go to bed early!
He is a curious little fella though: