North Shore Middle School club explores Tappen Beach

On a recent trip to Tappen Beach, students in Viking Explorers got to learn about the rocky shore they call home while using real scientific tools.

Viking Explorers is a hands-on Long Island Studies course at North Shore Middle School where students become scientists, engineers, and explorers. Using student-built underwater remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, students investigate the waterways and coastal environments that make Long Island unique.

Students learned to pilot and ballast ROVs, used seines and nets to collect local marine specimens, conducted water-quality testing, completed a beach cleanup, collected media for scientific documentation, and connected their observations to their course text, “The Outer Lands.”