Oviparous Animals Unit: Development of a Chick Rationale

How is your topic central to one or more disciplines and how does it meet mandates? Teaching about oviparous and viviparous animals while focusing on the timeline and development of chickens is something very thrilling and exciting for students. More importantly, teaching about the development of egg to chicken really highlights a basic cycle of a single animals life that can be translated to that of many other animals and eventually even to our own development. Our topic encompasses great vocabulary that contributes to understanding of the natural and scientific process of development. Although I believe that this unit would be very memorable and beneficial for my students I fear that it does not meet the districts mandates under science in particularly. During the time period of when my unit will be taught, the science mandates are to have students learn and discover soils and rocks. I am not certain how Penn Alexander has been allowed to student this topic and how they can go about justifying it as simply science. It is obvious that while teaching the development of chickens we dont emphasize meeting the standards that are set for this time period. Students will still gain much from this curriculum because the manner in which it is planned and the scaffolding of the content will ensure that all students gain master an adequate level of understanding of the objectives at hand. If one takes away the specific topic we could see that we are left with teaching vital literary objectives such as sequence of a story, cause and effect, and learning about non-fiction. My collaborating partner and I had no choice as to what topic to cover during the time period we would taking over and even our classroom mentors had no choice as to when this unit would be covered because the farm that provides the eggs has a designated time of delivery of the eggs. Even if the years past, students and teachers alike were unable to have the time to really develop a solid introduction to getting eggs and caring for them. Since the eggs were received after winter break neither party had that much open time leading up to receiving these eggs. Even in the early days in January, the objectives for science are to have students learn about and sort rocks. Again, getting eggs was not a mandate from the state of Pennsylvania. Regarding literacy, however, students will have books read to and be expected to read fiction and non-fiction books throughout the entire unit. The state standards for K-3 aim to have students read, interpret, analyzes literature which will be done on their own, with teacher assistance and as a whole class or in small groups. The objectives in place for the District of Philadelphia focus on cause and effect, story structure and using graphic organizers. By doing message time plus, and using graphic organizers for every read aloud done, students will really practice and master objectives such as story structure and will be able to identify sequence of a story. Since all first grade students will be writing their own nonfiction book, many of our objectives and routines in this unit will serve to scaffold what all students will be expected to do on their own as part of their non-fiction writing about their own animal of their choice. Finally, the National Science Standards focus on identifying characteristics of animals. By sorting images of varying types of oviparous and viviparous animals, students will able to being to use characteristics to help during the sorting of these animals. Students will also focus their attention to the next standard of studying the life cycle of organisms since I will simply introduce the concept that will help them master the idea of what a life cycle really is and how it changes from animal to animal. Students will later research life cycle of their own animal for their non-fiction book. All the students will have the opportunity to meet another National Science Standard by being Scientists. Any and all science inquiry-based activities I have my students participate it, I present it to them as the scientists they have to be during each investigation. In agreement with the science standards, I focus much of their attention in observation and since this is the first and crucial step to being able to study their observations to make an inference that is based on their recorded notes which can lead them to understanding how to classify oviparous versus viviparous. But most importantly, simply providing my students with opportunity to ask questions and be curious learners. Why would my topic be interesting? For my students:

I am lucky to have twenty-four young scholars in my first-grade classroom. My students are not perfect, as I am sure no one would expect them to be, but they are motivated collaborators of knowledge. My students reflect for learning the same enthusiastic emotions their teachers portray so if I could show them that this was interesting they would be further more enthralled by it. Even though my students are in first grade I try to move and carry myself with as much energy as I did when I was with kindergartners but enough discipline as if they were second graders. The classroom environment and expectations help my students respond well to their teacher overall but even more when they know that I am excited about something that I would like to share with them. As I have mentioned, the value of scaffolding during this entire unit that really enables all students to be fully included in the lessons. Also, being able to study the life cycle of real animals and be able to have the opportunity to question every step of the way makes this lesson that much more memorable. Before the students are able to hatch eggs they have been covering rocks and minerals in their once a week science class. It is far more engaging to be able to interact and learn the value of observation when you are looking at living organisms. Lastly, having the opportunity to learn about the life cycle of a chick, students will be naturally motivated to make connections to the lifecycles of other animals and even to that of humans. As mentioned before, our students although many come from supportive homes, not all students have the opportunity to wander outside of their own immediate neighborhood much less venture out to farms, the zoo rural areas where they can be exposed to lifestyles and ideas available perhaps not as far as they might expect. In addition to opportunities of exposure to the world, students would benefit greatly from being able to practice having responsibilities for something that is living. Not all of our students having the means to have a pet and at times when they do, not all are held accountable for feeding and or caring for them since theyre normally family pets. Students will all share the responsibility of turning the eggs, naming, feeding and caring for the chicks when they hatch. I know all my students will have the opportunity to have a significant role in this job and will certainly enjoy knowing that they are entrusted with this much responsibility at their young age which I believe will further help build their self-esteem! For me: Having been born in Guatemala with the opportunity to raise and care for chickens myself really impacts how motivated I should be regarding my topic. I didnt think teaching about chickens was thrilling enough to keep students focused and motivated for two weeks. In terms of my own motivation I felt as though I could have taken this opportunity to experiment with teaching so many things that on any other situation I would not be able to teach and in my eyes teaching about chickens would not be experimenting much. Once there was no real choice I began to realize that my experiences were not the same experiences might have had and that my own knowledge could make this unit that much more authentic. I felt that students need to have a huge and reoccurring concept be broken down and scaffold as much as possible in order for them to gain as much of the understanding as it is essential in order to later apply this knowledge to that of other living creatures. When I attempted to integrate another subject it was clear that students could develop the same enthusiasm over the topic that I was slowly developing myself. The problem was not that the topic was not interesting to me but rather all that could be integrated in a two week unit and even further, what could be taught if there was more time. I was initially very driven to integrate social studies and science as well as math and literacy! I became motivated that this would be an exciting undertaking but quickly I realized the complexity of a unit that only had two subjects fully intergraded. I worked collaboratively with my grade partner and after receiving input from teacher mentors, searching through bookstores and libraries we managed to gather a set of books that created a tactile and interactive representation of the objectives I aimed to cover. Even at this points my goals and resources were coming together well but I was still having difficulties picturing the entire unit with actual lessons with hooks, materials, closures, assessments and interactive-collaborative learning. I realized that the only way I could see the two weeks being played out was by making a timeline which would roughly highlight time available during the day, what resources were used during any given and what objectives had been covered and in what depth. Once this was completed the entire unit came to life and the questions changed from what I could teach with the resources I had to how I could make this teaching accessible to all my students in the most collaborative and engaging manner possible. I am a visual learner that needs to be interactive with my educational environment in order to be mastering

concepts. What I truly loved about my unit was being able to have the freedom to do with the objectives as I pleased. Thanks to having help with other resources like my professor Nancylee lending me real emu, ostrich, quail and other oviparous animals eggs I made sure students were able to interact with the materials as much as possible. As students followed the morning routine, they will recite and act out the poems while giving each other positive feedback after their performance. I will carry the egg observations they will make to the illustrations they will make and the inferences. My goal is for students to see the connection between parts of inquiry. All the graphic organizers will be colorful and neat to help the interactive process for all the students. Knowing that my students are extremely smart and curious will only help me stay flexible to just how many connections we can make based on what hatching chicks. I know I will have students go to the library during library time, others look at home or go to libraries during the weekend and return with books related to what we are learning. Several students did this back when we were studying about arctic animals such as penguins, polar bears, seals etc. Their learning is very much like wild-fire; we can fuel it with knowledge and they take it upon themselves to spread it everywhere. This is the exact reason why I find myself jumpy from this amazing excitement each morning that I am going to teach a lesson. Especially with this unit, it will be like having a little secret that I cant keep inside. How is my unit accessible to students based on development appropriateness? My unit is accessible to students in many different ways; from the scaffolding of each concept and lesson to every task and set of directions. The objectives taught are introduced, then modeled and then practiced in partners or groups. In this way all students are progressively guided to master each objective rather than being swarmed with all this information without much assistance provided by the teacher. In addition, students gain accessibility by being given a task, such as looking for non-fiction features but the first step is to browse, rotating through seven different baskets of non-fiction books of varying types of animals and insects that they can simply enjoy. As I teach them about and highlight each individual feature, on their own they begin to notice the ones they are comfortable recognizing. At this point it is my job to highlight their efforts as to encourage the remaining to see what they can identify and in this form, everyone is able to have the freedom to do it in a less threatening way. Later a scavenger hunt will help all the students have a fair chance to find books with non-fiction features that they have already recognize on their own. Scaffolding takes place also as I teach about the lifecycle that students are able to really learn in detail in week two. By then students are able to really understand each developmental stage and wonder What day of growing are they on Mrs. Spado? when they receive the fertilized eggs from the farmer. My unit is build around both Vygotsky and Piaget theories of developmental appropriateness. These two researchers have provided proof that for my first graders I have used sufficient scaffolding for them to have access to all the material presented to them. My unit is captivating for the young curious mind. First graders are right in between of what Piaget refers to the pre-operational and concrete operational periods of 6-11 years old (Pulaski, 1980, p17). Some egocentric tendencies still present during this time but the most important idea is that exposure to experiences and having the opportunity to interact all contribute to a child new schema or assimilation and accommodation to already existing one (Pulaski, 1980, p.12). In kindergarten these students have been exposed to great number of ideas and concepts but although some schemas have been created, now that they are in first grade, students can better accommodate previous knowledge and make sense of current learning. I agree with Piaget when he states: experience alone does not ensure development; the development cannot take place without active experience (Pulaski, 1980, p. 22). In order to keep their attention and their mind physically engaged I have created lessons that will allow them to for example, really see what a hatching chick looks like. However, without the dialogue between partners, scaffolding of information leading up to the activity and teacher explanation, students will not truly develop new knowledge. In addition, Piaget reminds us of the continuum that we must keep in mind when he states that changes in intellectual development are gradual and never abrupt (Pulaski, 1980, p. 26). Again, this is another reason why scaffolding learning is so important. I will spend two weeks introducing literary concepts that students will practice and eventually use on their own based on what they each individually know when they write their non-fiction books. The knowledge gained from this unit may not become apparent perhaps even years later but between now and then, I am confident that my students will have gained a solid base for their understanding of life cycle and their future interactions with literary works.

Lastly, Vygotsky supports my efforts to create a unit accessible to all children with his research and theories on scaffolding. He states: Scaffolding techniques, as just defined, consistently predict positive outcome s in children (Berk and Winsler, 1995, p. 32). Since many of my students had never been exposed to real interactions with oviparous animals much less even discussed the concept, I was forced to provide all the knowledge in a format so to enable all students, regardless of their own understandings, to be able to complete a chick journal, homework assignments and write their own non-fiction book. It is by the product of the students work samples that I will be able to see just how developmentally appropriate my techniques were. How is my unit accessible to students in term of resources available? It is truly amazing what can be created with effort and resources! I find myself at Penn Alexander a well-resourced school both with outside funding but more due to the financial and time contributions that the first grade collaborating teachers provide for students learning. In addition, parental support is always another consistent variable which helps make some of these amazing experiences possible. My two-week unit was mainly possible by all of the above and in addition to other contributing parties. Since hatching chicks has been done in the past, my classroom mentor has been the lead organizer in bringing this opportunity to the classroom and managing the details with the partnering farm. What makes the experience even better is having the opportunity to have real farmers bring the eggs and stay long enough for students to ask particular questions about maintaining a farm or caring for animals that well, we arent truly that equipped to answer. My classroom mentor also had development of the egg kits where students could open a plastic egg and inside see an image of what that egg would look like on that particular egg. This resource will further cushioned our learning by allowing inquiry and challenging different depictions of what happens on a given day inside the egg. I am certain my students will take it upon themselves to identify where the albumen is visible and what representation of the development of a chick on day 5 appears most accurate. Again, the most amazing experience that students will have is to observe various real eggs from oviparous animals such as emu, ostrich, quail, duck, goose, and farm-raised brown chicken eggs. Having Nancylee as a teacher and with her efforts and connections my students will have an opportunity to even know what an emu looks like since during the categorizing activity some students were not able to identify it. Being exposed to what all these different eggs look like and having images of many other oviparous animals will help students really be able to create a new schema for the term oviparous animals! How does this unit provide opportunity for multiple connections? As I mentioned if time is not a limiting factor, this unit can help reinforce previously made connections, create new understandings and lead to many more concepts in every subject that should be taught. The previous connections that can be made go back to our first graders study of penguins and arctic animals. Again, scaffolding to their non-fiction writing, this unit enabled students to have more of the vocabulary to be able to more effectively interact with literary works. Students could focus on just where and how eggs hatch as compared to their previous learnings of the emperor penguins which dont have a nest like the ones that chickens have. In addition, students can take the learning of the development of an egg and lifecycle of a chicken and explore curiosities of the lifecycle of a kid. As even the more quiet students became captivated with the literary works used in this unit, they began to wonder about themselves and for those who did not have siblings the questions had more of a mysterious edge to it. Students experienced authors purpose and craft by looking at two literary works in particular that shared the same title but focusing on how each author went about creating two storylines and two very different books with commonalities that made them credible. Regarding new learnings, students will begin to see eggs, or chickens in the sequence of a story scavenger-hunt, in their math addition word problems, in science as we discuss digestion, environment and later dissect the un-hatched eggs, and finally in social studies. In social studies, will continue with the objectives during the week of my two-week take over and continue the discussion of diversity and culture around the world. Since we have discussed all the different types of homes, the continents, culture and what makes up culture, we will focus look at us and how we are practice

traditions and celebrations that derive from various cultures. I will have all first grade students through literary works, identify various uses for eggs, meals in different homes that include eggs, and even the use of chickens and hens in different countries. Later students will partake in creating a culturally sensitive image of a chicken that is really a reflection of who they are. In this activity I will be able to add Art and music into my lesson since I will have them listen to traditional music from a few countries around the world as they complete their My Guate-American Chicken. In the title theyre able to name some of the contributing countries, religions or simply home traditions that guide their habits and practices every day. In my classroom the diversity of our communities can help guide a conversation of the different breeds of chickens which became very exciting for me to learn I am sure students will certainly love to investigate these ideas. I am convinced that with more time, and not many more resources students of this game can remain captivated through the in-depth study of eggs and chicks for an entire semester if not more! Lastly, I know that the connection that students can make about tradition, cultures, different life-styles and areas like rural/urban, and simply recalling a memorable investigation that sealed a concept for the entire life is what makes this unit valuable in one an many connections that all my students will continue to make as curious learners.

Resources
Berk. L. E., and Winsler, A. (1995). Scaffoling Childrens Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education. Vol. 1, pages 1-37. Naeyc Resarch into Practice Series. Pulaski, M. (1980). Understanding Piaget: An Introduction to Childrens Cognitive Development. New York: Harper Row, Pgs. 1-54.