Raising Creatures for Educational Purposes

In some schools, dissecting frogs or other small creatures has been a mainstay of biology classes. Recent changes in how education is taught have made changes in these programs, so some students are now given an opportunity to hatch and raise their own creatures instead. Rather than looking at a creature after it is no longer living, students are expected to care for it. helping their creature flourish is part of their assignment, and they are expected to report on the actions they have taken to keep it alive.

Some schools choose small animals such as chickens, and students are each given an egg. Their assignment will be to keep the egg safe and warm until it hatches, and their failure to hatch a live egg might gain them a failing grade. Those who succeed at their task will then have to take care of the hatchling until their assignment is over, and some school systems allow students to keep it when the experiment is over.

Raising a creature is not always as easy as students think, and they learn an extra lesson in responsibility when given this experiment. Live chicks are cute when they first hatch, but they need food, water and care to remain healthy. The student must be able to understand and learn what their chick needs, and keeping it warm at all times will be part of what they learn.

Writing the report at the end of the assignment will show the teacher whether or not the student has learned the important fundamentals of what it takes to keep a chick alive. If the student has done their work properly, they should be able to explain all the work necessary to feed, water and keep a chick warm enough for it to remain healthy in the environment they have created for it.