September 2010
Feathers and Cheeps, Oh My!
by Gail Rubin
The low cheeping of young chicks permeates Susan King’s seventh grade classroom at Roosevelt Middle School in Tijeras. On this last day of school in May, students are coming in to claim the chickens they will raise at home over the summer.
Since 1994, King has brought to her classroom chicks to hatch as a means of teaching biology and math skills in a very real way. She has raised her own fowl at home since 1988, when she was a student teacher and saw a group of chickens pass by her cabin on the Crest Road.
“The chickens get the students directly and emotionally tied into science,” King observes. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. It keeps them engaged right up to the end of the school year.”
King moved to New Mexico in 1985. She has BA degrees in biology from Cornell College in Iowa and in education from the University of New Mexico, and a Masters degree in plant ecology from the University of Wisconsin. Her husband Steve, a mechanical genius, helps with the incubators, brooders and other equipment related to hatching and raising chickens.
“The really cool thing about this unit is that it reaches all kids, even behaviorally challenged kids,” says King. “It brings out the best in everybody. You put a chick in someone’s hand and they turn into a different person.”
She teaches about evolution in the animal kingdom, from sponges and protozoa to insects and vertebrates, including amphibians and birds. She ends the year with a unit titled, “What can I learn about the nature of birds by hatching and raising chicks?”
For biology lessons, there are lab activities studying the structure of eggs and tracking the incubating eggs’ development. The students learn about gene selection with special breeds and they candle the eggs to see which are fertile and which aren’t. They learn about feather structure by writing with goose quills.
The students use math skills to build brooder pens out of poster board, yardsticks, lamps, and wood chips. They calculate humidity and temperature for the incubators and estimate the fertility and hatch rates of their classroom eggs. This past year, the hatch rate was 68 percent producing 81 chicks.
“You can’t count your chickens before they hatch,” says King.
The chicks in the classroom prompt discussions of real-world issues such as cockfighting and where meat and eggs in the grocery store originate. King humanely butchers and eats some of the chickens she raises at home, and eats their eggs as well.
The big event is when the eggs begin hatching in mid-May, 21 days after incubation starts in April. Everything in the classroom stops as the students watch, amazed at the chicks’ exhausting process.
“What’s awesome is we’ve been talking about life all year and the kids get to watch things hatch. It’s really the miracle of life happening right there before them,” says King. “The kids get attached to the eggs, much less the chicks. This is all about life and death, and it makes it real.”
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