CLASSROOM:Nature club takes on sharks

On Thursday at Whittier Elementary School in Costa Mesa, 60 third-graders sat in the multipurpose room and sang a song about sharks. The lyrics were written by Ken Watson, a science teacher who visits schools around Southern California, and the students wanted to learn the song before he came to visit them the following week.

It was a pretty wordy song, too — especially considering that most of the students were English-learners. At one point, the lyrics addressed the fact that sharks were becoming an endangered species:

Misunderstood and misaligned, your numbers dwindle fast/From shark-fin soup to cowboy boots/You're marketed and taxed/Teeth and jaws and cartilage, stacked and sold as jewels/The food chain breaks, the top end shakes/No conscience and no rules.It was the weekly meeting of Whittier's nature club, in which third-graders learn about science up close and go on field trips to local wilderness areas. The club is about more than birds, beasts and flowers, though. For Whittier students, who live in one of Newport-Mesa's poorest neighborhoods, it offers experiences — and vocabulary — that many wealthier kids take for granted.

"They need these kinds of real-life experiences to connect them with all the opportunities in the world," said Kate Bannert, one of the teachers in charge of the program.

The weekend before Thursday's meeting, the students had visited the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific and handled a number of sea creatures. Back in the classroom, they painted pictures of the animals they had seen and listened to science specialist Julie Crawford discuss the make-up of a shark's body.

At one point, Crawford, who was hired by a grant through the Newport-Mesa Schools Foundation, told the class about how many teeth sharks go through in a lifetime. A shark's jawbone, she said, was like a "conveyor belt," with new teeth constantly growing and old ones dropping off.

"Do you think sharks have to take good care of their teeth?" she asked. "No. They lose a few every time they eat."

At the aquarium a few days earlier, the students didn't pet any killer sharks, but they did get to touch a few smaller ones. For many, though, the stingray was the most memorable.

"Sometimes it splashes the water because it wants to play with you," said Andrew Garcia, 8.

On their previous field trip, the students went to nearby Canyon Park to look at cacti and other plant life. The nature club's activities were fun, they said, but also made them more activist-minded.

"Some animals are endangered," said Leslie Menendez, 9. "It makes me feel sad, because people are killing them for no reason."