Tyler Morning Telegraph (September 21, 2004)

Teaching a Tall Lesson: Jones Elementary Uses Caldwell Zoo to Provide a Hands-On Classroom

Already intrigued by the tall creatures, the students saw instead of pink a dark-colored, prehensile tongue that the giraffes used to take leaves out of the children's hands.

The reason giraffes have a dark tongue is to prevent sunburn in the hot sun on the African plains, the giraffe's natural habitat, which is "a great adaptation," explained the zoo's curator of education, Linda Kunze.

The tongue is prehensile, she added, so giraffes can reach out with their tongue like a hand, grasp a tree branch, strip off and eat the leaves.

The visiting students were taken to feed the giraffes because it's fun and very educational, Ms. Kunze said.

The fifth graders spent five full school days at the zoo recently focusing primarily on adaptation of animals - how animals survive in their habitat. Students in other grades at Jones, including kindergartners, will get their turn to spend a week at the zoo on a rotating basis as the school year progresses.

 All of them will also visit Discovery Science Place, a children's museum that the academy has also formed a partnership with to assist in its new thrust as a math science technology magnet school.

Each day at the zoo follows a different theme, such as environmental enrichment, and allows students to see live animals, rather than learn about them from a video or a book.

The fifth-graders learned about feeding strategies as well as environmental enrichment at the anteater's enclosure. Anteaters, which have a long snout with a long tongue inside, would rip open an ant or termite mound in the wild with their big claws and use their big tongue to slurp up the insects, Ms. Kunze told students.

The zoo provides an enrichment by drilling a hole in a watermelon, scooping out some of the watermelon meat and putting in meal worms for the anteaters to slurp out. "Anteaters love it. The big male after he finishes the mealworms rips the watermelon open; then the monkeys have a treat and the birds have a treat. It's great enrichment for those animals," Ms. Kunze said.

 Zoo personnel also gave fifth graders a lesson in learned versus instinctual behavior of animals. In an experiment, a swab bearing peppermint extract was put close to mealworms to allow the children to check out how the worms would respond to a strong odor. The worms backed up.

To learn how mealworms react to cold, children saw a mealworm placed on an ice cube. In a short time, it stopped moving but when it was placed in a child's hands, it suddenly started wiggling again after warming up.

"The mealworm didn't learn it should back up when the light comes close; it didn't learn when it is on something cold it needs to slow down," Ms. Kunze said.

Their action was an instinctual behavior. Purpose of those experiments was to get the students to understand the difference between something an animal has to learn versus something it just automatically does, she explained.

Getting a lesson on how camouflage works and body coverings, students were taken to a grassy area to hunt for worms - really different colored two-inch long latch hook rug yarn. "They learned if you were a bird, it would be tough to find a little green worm in green grass to eat," Ms. Kunze said. "Almost every animal in the world has camouflage of some sort; camouflage is a big issue within the animal world."

The best part about Jones students' time at the zoo is that they are learning basic natural science principles about how animals adapt to their surroundings, how they are perfectly built either physically or behaviorally to survive in whatever environment that animals is supposed to survive in, Ms. Kunze said.

"We're trying to make their science studies more personal, more concrete and we reinforce what the teachers are teaching. Everything we (zoo personnel) are doing is aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (the state-mandated curriculum)," she added.

Jones' teachers accompany students to the zoo to continue educational activities in reading, math, spelling, music, art, and etceteras.

 Discovery Science Place personnel played a supportive role there, but will take the lead when each grade also visits the museum on designated afternoons for science classes related topics such as conduction, measurement and science concepts.

For example, Kristen Parks, ESP education director, said, students will examine nutrition labels to make them wiser consumers, study the solar system and the body's digestive system, plus look at variables and how variables affect outcomes of experiments.

DSP, said Lucina Presley, arts/science director, will also conduct six workshops at the school for teachers, modeling in classrooms teaching strategies, working with teachers on their lesson plans and how to present an integrated science unit.

DSP will assist teachers in using the arts to help teach science, social studies, language arts and math. "When (students) study physical properties, for example, we do experiments with artwork to help them see how light rays work," Ms. Presley said. That helps them retain the information and gets them engaged, she added.

Ms. Parks and Ms. Presley are among 30 people across the U.S. picked to participate in a two-year training program at Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco in the guided inquirer teaching strategy. A leader in science education reform, the museum partners with King's College in London and University of California at Santa Clara.

Used with permission, Tyler Morning Telegraph