Coming soon to Heron School: Baby chickens, baby quail, baby pheasant, maybe tiny frogs and butterflies, too.
Seventh-grade science teacher Karen McDaniels has won a grant of about $1,500 from the California Educational Research Association (CERA) for a Life Science project to study various animal eggs, hatch them, then release the babies. She also plans to operate a worm farm at Heron this year.
“I really feel strongly that getting an experience is how you learn from science,” McDaniels said. “Not by talking about other people doing it, but by doing it yourself. Anything I can do that’s hands-on is really the style of teaching I strive toward.”
There’s education in looking inside fertile eggs, watching them incubate, tracking what percentage of eggs hatch, observing newborns, learning about habitat, and discussing what factors affect a tiny animal’s birth and survival.
There’s also education in learning how animal species impact ecology, how they contribute to biodiversity, interrelationships between species, and how humans can help or hurt Mother Nature – thus enhancing or reducing animals’ chance of survival.”
“It’s eye-opening to them that they can contribute and make a difference,” McDaniels said of her 7th-grade science students. “They can be involved in a constructive or deconstructive manner. That’s kind of the whole purpose.”
Heron’s project was one of three selected recently by CERA, a statewide nonprofit organization, for a Classroom Innovation Grant based on its methodology, evaluation, and impact on student learning.
CERA describes itself as “working at all levels of education to improve the practice of instruction, assessment, evaluation, conducting and applying research, and using data to inform instruction decisions.”
Much of Heron’s roughly $1,500 grant will be spent for fertilized animal eggs and for busing students on field trips to release any baby animals born. McDaniels hatched chicks in her class last year and already has much of the incubation equipment needed, as well as a flashlight-like “candling” device to peer into eggs.
McDaniels hopes her 7th-grade science students will leave Heron feeling empowered about improving animals’ plight. “That’s what I’m hoping, that’s kind of the point,” she said. “They can say, ‘Yes, I can do this, yes I can make a difference – I have in the past, so I know what I can do to help.”
