Grade 2 students recently learned about turbine blades, raising chicks and tadpoles through hands-on learning.
Sarah Bear’s class at Rendell Park Elementary School uses these techniques to solidify lessons taught out of books and on boards.
Read more: Robotics challenge grade six LPSD students
“It adds a lot more fun for kids to be able to touch and feel,” said Bear. “Hands-on activities really help trigger different parts of their brain than
regular paper and pencils.”
The class watched chicken eggs in an incubator before seeing the chicks hatch. The students now care for the nearly two-week-old birds as they prepare to leave the classroom.
“They’re getting their feathers and their wings right now, so they’re getting ready to be teenagers,” said Bear. “Now that they’re getting big enough, they’re ready to go back to the farm where they can finish their life cycle there.”
Students are also watching tadpoles transform.
“We found them in the egg. We’ll watch them grow their back and front legs and we’ll watch the tail start to disappear,” said Bear. “If they bring permission from their mom and dad and a container with some holes in the top of it, I’ll give them some swamp water and a tadpole or two to take home.”
The class is also following the famous Bald Eagle pair, Shadow and Jackie, online.
“We’ve watched Shadow and Jackie right from the get-go with their eggs,” said Bear. “We watch them hatch, we watch them grow and now, we’re getting ready to watch them fledge. It really feels like they’ve become part of our classroom family.”
The students discuss the chicks, tadpoles and eagles at school and home.
“The excitement behind all of it gets everyone buzzing,” said Bear. “If you run into kids outside of school, on the soccer field or at the hockey rink, they’ll ask, ‘Hey, what’s going on with the eagles?’ or ‘What’s going on with the chicks?’”
The students also built wind turbines as part of a science and design lesson with help from Cornelius Krahn, an educational technology consultant with the Lloydminster Public School Division.
“Hands-on learning is what’s going to make it more concrete, make it more real for them,” said Krahn. “It’s so much better, especially with younger minds, to give them a physical example of what you’re talking about.”
The students designed, tested and redesigned small turbine blades, learning from each stage of the process.
“They are thinking about building something, testing it out, fixing it and then trying it again,” said Krahn.
Lethbridge College donated the materials, including a large fan and turbine kits, as part of a partnership with the Lethbridge Public School Division.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity,” said Krahn. “They have a wind turbine technician program, and so they donated all of the material.”
Read more: LPSD teacher bringing automated agro to classroom
