Crickets and Isopods! Oh, My!

WOW! Who knew that some bugs at school could cause so much excitement?!? Today was the big day for the students to put the finishing touches on their terrariums, and that meant adding our critters to their new homes. We spent the last couple of days learning about our new visitors so that we could understand how they would fit into our ecosystems. We learned some pretty interesting facts; for example, I didn't realize that isopods (in our case, pillbugs) were mainly aquatic creatures. They are more closely related to lobsters and shrimp than to insects. They even breathe through an organ that is similar to gills (another important reason why we need to keep the terrariums well-watered)! Going into this week, I don't think the students thought they would learn much information about the crickets that they didn't already know. However, we learned a great deal about their anatomy, including the fact that the females have a body part called an ovipositor that is used to lay eggs. It protrudes out of the back of the abdomen, and it is a key way to tell the difference between a male and a female. I can't say I was looking too closely at the crickets when I was trying to get them out of the holding containers for the students, so some of the kids may end up with baby crickets while others do not.
Needless to say, the students were pretty amped up this morning when we went into the lab. I knew they would be, so I made sure to go through the expectations very clearly and gave regular reminders. That didn't seem to stop their little bodies from controlling their energy, and we had a few spills in class today. Luckily two of the spills were just the water cups that we use to water the terrariums. One spill was a terrarium; the student who knocked it over, though, had some fast hands and caught it before anything spilled out. However, that didn't stop the terrarium from becoming a little deformed. Like everything else that happens at school, I can put these situations to my advantage and use them as examples for the other classes as to what can happen. They are also great learning opportunities for the students involved, as they end up being more careful in the future...usually.
Now I just have to hope that our new critters don't die. I'll let you know.

Mindfulness thought for the week: Be nice. It's really the only thing that matters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Winding Things Down

Memorial Day has come and gone, and the feeling of summer is upon us. While it isn't quite here yet, it's close. If we were at school, the buzz of energy from the students would be through the roof. Virtually learning, however, has definitely put a damper on that. At school, we would be wrapping up units while trying to rein in the students' attention away from their dreams of sleeping in late and other summer plans. This week, units are still being wrapped up, but that struggle of reining in their attention isn't quite there; many of them probably already sleep in late, and summer plans are obviously still up in the air. Last week was when I officially wrapped up my final science unit, so this week was made up of some enrichment activities related to that final standard. We have been learning about how chemical reactions occur when two substances are mixed and a new substance gets created. This week I gave the students an opportunity to dig in a little deeper to chemi...
Read more

Less than a week

It was another full (and exciting) week, and it's hard to believe that next Tuesday is the start of a new school year! Monday and Tuesday had some professional learning centered around UDL: we looked at our district's "non-negotiables" for the teaching and learning that happens in Sheboygan Falls; we had an online session with UDL guru Allison Posey, who offered us some things to ponder and focus in on for the year; we took time to dive into the UDL checkpoints for the access level of the guidelines in order to identify ways that we can apply them into our classrooms; and, probably the most beneficial for me at this time, was the opportunity to do some UDL lesson planning with colleagues. This allowed me to get a closer look at my new science standards with a UDL lens. In addition to our UDL work, we also continued discussions with the types of things we will need to remember when it comes to students arriving on Tuesday. We went over our classroom "launch...
Read more

Another day off

It came unexpectedly, but today was another day off of school due to the weather. Freezing rain overnight led to difficult traveling conditions this morning and throughout the day...not that I would know, though, as I stayed put. So, the extra time gave me the opportunity to check some items off of the old to-do list along with some items to manage at home. This week has been a fun week at school! In 7th grade, the students have been learning about DNA and the process that goes into coding for amino acids and proteins. To help with understanding this, the students did a little decoding of a puzzle that required the students to use the bases of the DNA molecule. After learning about the decoding process, the students were then challenged with making puzzles of their own. The students worked in teams to create a puzzle message, code it, and then put the code into a DNA sequence. Today we were going to have a decoding challenge of the puzzles created, but the weather had other thoughts! ...
Read more