Throughout fall and before the chill of the winter, teacher Tom Harris and his group of eight middle schoolers will be doing a lot of their learning outside the classroom and in the ocean.

Five Acre School kick-started a longterm oceanography unit geared toward their middle students. Led by Harris, the students will participate in a wide-array of ocean-focused exercises with an emphasis on “on the job” style learning where students will be able to conduct marine debris beach monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, learn to surf and explore the ocean by being in the water.

“We’re really focusing on the outdoors this year,” Harris said. “One of the biggest challenges for a teacher is to present the information in a way students can understand it and learning through experience can really help with this.”

For years, students of all ages from Five Acre School have been venturing to the nearby Dungeness Spit with their teachers in pursuit of “learning by doing,” Harris said, but because the middle school students can hike faster and therefore do more in a specific timeframe, Harris wanted to expand the students’ ocean experience and tap into the local surf community.

“The surf community has been a leader in maintaining beach access and ocean preservation,” Harris said.

As part of the school’s oceanography unit, students will have the opportunity to learn to surf and interact with the ocean in a whole new way. Mark Pincikowski, Sequim High School girl’s dive coach and experienced surfer, will help Harris introduce the students to surfing and being in the water.

Harris intends to incorporate basic science such as perfecting proper data collection techniques, controlling variables, graphing data and bettering the students’ understanding of wave and tidal action as well as water chemistry. Also, by physically being in the water, Harris hopes the students will be able to understand the ocean from varying levels and depths once equipped with goggles and snorkels.

Harris and his students have collaborated with Heidi Pedersen, citizen science coordinator for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, to establish a marine debris monitoring station on the Dungeness Spit. The students will visit the station monthly to conduct monitoring and provide Pedersen with their ongoing findings.

“One of the challenging, but also cool things about a multi-age classroom (like at Five Acre School) is you can’t do the same things, Harris said. “But, something like an ongoing monitoring project is always changing and we can build on our work.”

Because many of the activities associated with the new oceanography unit at Five Acre School is not something Harris and his students can be out doing everyday, Harris said he is trying to simultaneously create and implement a curriculum that will allow for him to maintain the students’ interests from the classroom as well.