WESTMINSTER : Students Get a Feel for the Language

With wonder in his eyes, Hung Phan, 12, reached into a tank of cold seawater and gingerly plucked out a monstrous red crab. Grinning, Hung turned it over and watched it wave long, spindly legs in the air.

“It feels weird. It’s all rough and spiky,” he said moments later.

Glancing toward two portable tanks simulating a California tide pool, complete with a shark, sea anemones and sea stars, he added: “This is a lot of fun.”

Hung was one of about 250 Finley Elementary School students who saw and touched dozens of sea creatures Wednesday as part of a program designed to improve language skills for students who speak limited English, school officials said.

Called Project SMILE, which stands for Science and Math Instruction Leading to English, the program focuses primarily on the school’s 300 Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking children. The program features hands-on activities that teach students English by giving them something exciting and educational to discuss at school and at home, said coordinator Diane Materazzi.

As part of that program, students visited the traveling tide pool exhibit, run by the Living Science Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Brea.

Today, another 250 students will go through the program, which also includes a slide show. At the mock tide pool, students crowded around tanks and stared with a mixture of awe, eagerness and trepidation as they waited to hold the crab and pet the dark, two-foot horn shark.

Students and teachers praised Wednesday’s exhibit, which they called a valuable teaching tool.

“When you look at a book, its not as fun as when you get to touch things,” said fifth-grade student Monique West, 11.

Teacher Richard Richards said the children were clearly excited by the exhibit and predicted they would maintain much of that interest once they returned to their classrooms.

“Just the fact that they’re encouraged to touch things is important,” he said. “Usually they hear just the opposite: ‘Keep you hands to yourself.’ ”