Come explore how you can use low-budget pet store supplies and zebrafish (Danio rerio) to spark your students’ curiosity and drive cutting-edge, real-world inquiries in your classroom. The zebrafish are freshwater fish that are at the forefront of biomedical research and are easily maintained in a classroom aquarium. In this hands-on interactive session, participants will explore the value of zebrafish to teach multiple topics including organisms’ interactions with their environment, cell structure and processes; growth, development, reproduction of organisms, ecology and genetics. Discover how real-life experiences with zebrafish inspire students to ask meaningful questions, design experiments, work a microscope to make observations, and analyze data. Discussions about the scalability of zebrafish inquiries to meet the learning needs of diverse students at multiple grade levels including Pre-AP, AP Biology, Aquatic science and Environmental science will be conducted. Classroom ready resources including vendor information for these organisms, care and feeding requirements, links to free teaching resources/interactives, and alignments to TEKS across grade levels will be provided.
