Target 3 – Flexible Learning Environments FWSU will maximize flexible learning environments by redefining the school day, promoting learning experiences that extend beyond the school classroom, and fostering creativity, innovation, and differentiated learning opportunities for all.
Action Step – Develop opportunities for students to collaborate, innovate, create and
conceptualize in all learning settings
Indicator of Success - Students are engaged in answering authentic questions and solving problems in collaborative settings.
May is a month of great new beginnings. The trees are leafing out. The grass is getting greener and growing, and the birds are performing their springtime dance of joy.
Inside the Kindergarten room 102 at BFA Fairfax Elementary, incubating chick eggs have just hatched! Mrs. Aceto’s class (along with Mrs. Breen’s class) has been studying chick incubation. The learning is part of the Kindergarten Living and Non-living Science Unit and the Second Grade Non-Fiction Text Unit.
The process of incubation took 21 days. During those 21 days, students candled (looked inside the egg with a flashlight in a dark room) the eggs and were able to observe the growth of the embryo. Observations from the candling included eyes, legs, air sac, beak, feathers, and pulsating, which could have been the heartbeat. Friday, day 21, brought a brood of chicks as students observed the hatching.
Because it is difficult to let 40 students all witness the hatching at once, teachers set up an iPad with Apple TV to project a hatch live. As the chick struggled exhaustively to free itself from the egg, students were held captivated by what they were witnessing. Once the chick broke free from its shell, cheers of joy and triumph erupted from the Kindergartners, Second Graders and from the adults in the room. Students wrote that it was the best experience of their life! Some even chose to write narratives about having chicks in the classroom!
Students also observed that young chicks are able to walk really fast after being hatched. Kindergarteners took photos of the whole process from eggs, to small and large cracks in the eggs, to wet, hatched chicks and finally, to fluffy, quick moving chicks.
They are now working to create stories about their experience and learning to use My Story, an app that allows them to create a personalized story with pictures, words, and voice recordings.
The FWSU Story 