North Cedar students learn about life through chickens

CLARENCE - There are high-pitched peeps coming from Tracey Dispensa's junior high science room.

The students are studying life cycles so they have an assortment of terrariums, aquariums and cages. In the back corner is a cage with four different breeds of chickens.

The junior high students are currently studying milkweed, but they take a very long time to progress through their stages of life, so they thought chickens would be easier and faster to observe.

Dispensa got the chicks from Thiessen's in Tiffin. The first thing on the agenda was to name the chicks. Dispensa had her class vote on names and the students decided on Claudia, Twinkie, Hershey and Bandit.

Her classes have been learning about populations and ecosystems this semester.

'Every Friday we write one observation per class period for one of our chickens,” Dispensa said. 'There are such drastic changes week to week that students practice making scientific observations while also learning to take care of the chickens and keep them alive.”

With animals being the main focus of their unit, populations and ecosystems, her classes will get to observe the chickens grow. They will then be writing a lab paper about what each student specifically took away from the ongoing investigation of the chickens.

Some of the students wanted to take the chickens home with them at the end of the year or when they outgrew their cage. With guardian permission, students are on a list to take a chicken home with them.

'I like having chicks in the classroom because after we are done with our work then we might get to play with them,” said Jenna Syring, an eight-grader.

'Some students gravitate toward them more than others,” Dispensa said. 'I am very surprised how some students have stepped up to either help build an extension of our coop outside of class, or volunteered to clean the cage. I am very proud of how well my students have taken on this responsibility and how caring they are for the chickens.”