Zoo School Inquiry

 

In January, my grade ones were fortunate enough to attend one week of Petro-Canada Zoo School at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. We shared the week, the discoveries, and the delights with my colleague Cheryl Weighill’s grade two students.

 

We had been planning this experience for one full year. We actually felt like we knew exactly what would happen during our time at the zoo. As is so normal in all inquiry experiences, we were soon to discover that we had no idea what would happen, where it would lead or how we could possibly contain the excitement, and resulting inquiries!

 

 

As soon as school began, we began studying the needs of animals. We pulled every fact book about wild animals we could find into the room. Children some how read facts when it seemed they could read nothing else. It was an amazing beginning to reading. Notes were kept and information shared with the class every day, as discoveries were made.

All facts were kept so that students to watch themselves grow as researchers.

We surveyed the school to determine what animal at the Zoo would be the favourite of the most students.

 As some children had never been to the Valley Zoo, we went for a visit in early December. We spent one wintery day there exploring, planning our animal studies, and discovering all we could about the adventure we were to begin in January.

 

Mrs. Weighill and I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop about elephant painting at the Zoo. We spent a morning with Lucy the elephant watching her paint. We became so enthralled with the power of an animal actually painting, that we shared the experience with our students, with digital pictures and glorious stories!

Well suddenly we had children absolutely determined to help Lucy be the best painter she could be, as they were the best painters that they could be!

Coincidentally, the umbrella inquiry for both our rooms for this whole year was “how do we take care of the planet?” So being a steward for Lucy’s painting was a natural extension of our stewardship of all animals in zoo.

 

The children discussed and decided that a cookie sale would earn us enough money to purchase canvasses, brushes, and acrylics for Lucy. The children were so very excited about making made home made cookies for the school mates.

We sold cookies at morning recess and rarely had enough leftover for the noon hour sale. Math money skills improved markedly during the week of sales!

The line up begins early for cookies!

There were so many chocolate chip cookies!

 

By participating in the daily sales, children learned that chocolate chip or fancy designed cookies (like pink elephants) were the easiest to market!

 

The children helped us count the profits daily! We couldn’t believe our grand total of $512.00! Little did we know that we were just beginning the rush of excitement!

Children decided that it would be very profitable to sell milk and cookies the High School end of the school. Big kids = big appetites! So this is on the agenda for spring! Plus the more enterprising want to sell cookbooks of our recipes to earn more money for the Zoo.

 

In planning with our parents for the week of Zoo School, we discovered that they were even more enthusiastic than our children. We had professional photographers choosing to spend whole days and shoe 100’s of pictures of our experience. Parents booked off work to participate in the excitement.

 

 

One parent gave an afternoon every day to share her art technique, using Polaroid photography of a live parrot!

 

The art that resulted from this week was most impressive!

  

While we attended the Zoo, every child spent 30 minutes each day observing their chosen animal. For many children this was not enough! So we managed to squeeze time out of the lunch hour to spend time in small groups  with the tigers, snow leopard, takin, and wolves. The results of these special times are just beginning to surface. I am expecting more art, writing and stories to emerge after spring break.

 

Our photographers compiled a CD  for the children to view. When the media types in High School saw it, suddenly we had a digital movie of images, children’s voice and television news clips! This part of the inquiry is also unfinished!

 

The excitement was so acute each day at the Zoo, that it was like Christmas morning before the presents for the entire day!

Consequently it has taken weeks for the children to begin processing the experience. Only now are the stories beginning in their writer’s workshop.

 Such a powerful inquiry touches the hearts and minds of every child in ways that I am only beginning to understand. One child has been writing about his his experience with the takin every single day for the last 3 weeks. He is determined to create a factual book that reds like a novel. We will come back to this inquiry as his work develops.