An Unexpected Lesson
One morning when the class and I entered the classroom we discovered our class fish, Ferb, had pasted overnight. I had a variety of ages in the classroom, the younger students didn't believe he was dead and the older students didn't mind it, but when one of the students asked me how he'd died I personally didn't know the exact answer, so I decided to make this unexpected part of our day a lesson.
The containor the children made together during art to place Ferb in.
The students during the ceremony listened to the older students speak about why Ferb may have died.
The older kids had researched why Ferb may have pasted and other facts about fish they wanted to know. They then read what they discovered to the other children.
Throughout some of my Auburn courses I’ve been taught to teach according to the children’s interest, fortunately I was able to test what I learned on my students. I was able to “turn a project into a passionate project.” Students are excited for class each day when they are involved in the learning process (V. Davie, 2015). I didn’t expect to walk into that classroom that day with a deceased class fish and children so curious about what had happened, but I decided to run as far as I could with the children’s interest. The students amazed me at how long they stayed engaged in learning about fish. It started with a dead class pet and ended with a funeral put on by children with facts about fish and a burial for Ferb the fish.
The project formed when I noticed each student had their own theory about what they believed happened to the fish to cause its death, such as the other fish ate it, he couldn’t breath under water and he was currently swimming upside down because he wasn’t actually dead. After listening to the children’s conversations about the fish I asked them if they wanted to research their theories. The children were so interested in what the Internet had to say about fish that the children ended up crowding around the laptop as they traveled deeper into the Internet about fish. The older kids wrote down notes they discovered, such as the typical life expectancy and the different positions fish could swim. The younger children had later decided to build a casket for Ferb to be placed in during the ceremony the older children put on.
When I saw the fish had died I didn’t know how the children would take it and I wasn’t sure what the best route was but after learning in class that the children should control their own lessons I decided to let the children run with their thoughts for as long it would take them. The children were engaged, interested, and curious and above all the children learned. I didn’t expect to cover fish for an entire day with my students but life, as a teacher is unexpected. As a teacher, it is my job to scaffold children down the right path and I feel like listening to the children’s interest is a great way to send children down an educational path. Children know what they want to learn and as a teacher I want to guide them in exploring more about their interest.
Davis, V. (2015, August 19). 5 Ways of Bringing Student Passions to Student Learning. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/bringing-student-passions-to-learning