Dede DeAngelis and  Stacey Dronke’s Intermediate School third-grade students recently teamed up with art teacher Stefanie Caporlingua to create beautiful biomes to artistically demonstrate their knowledge of the ocean, savannah, rainforest, forest, desert or Arctic.

A biome is a large region of Earth that has a certain climate and certain types of living things. Major biomes include tundra, forests, grasslands, and deserts. The plants and animals of each biome have traits that help them to survive in their particular biome.

Each biome has many ecosystems, which are the interaction of living and nonliving things in an environment.   Temperature, soil, and the amount of light and water help determine what life exists in a biome.

Once assigned a region, students chose animals to research. In art class, they created their animals and in the classroom, they gathered supplied to build their biomes.

Their work also included technology integration. Students used various websites as part of their research and created Google slideshows as part of the assignment.

Their newly acquired knowledge was shared in an exhibit-like atmosphere when other intermediate and elementary students visited to see the biomes and their animals, highlighting the science, technology and art components of STEAM (science-technology-engineering-arts-mathematics) education.

Visit the Minisink Valley School District’s Facebook page to see more photos.