Memories of a grade 1 zoo inquiry: “What are the most interesting animals?”

How our interest in learning about exotic animals like cheetahs, tigers, and gorillas led to an interest in learning about exotic and local birds, then hatching chicks, then becoming ‘wormologists’! Cross-curricular connections to math, language, drama, visual art, (chicken) dance, phys-ed, and science.

Read all about this extensive inquiry below.

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Memories of a zoo inquiry - “What are the most interesting animals?”

During the remote learning period of the second wave of COVID-19, students played an online math game in which they were rewarded with animal pets when they completed tasks. They loved the wild jungle animals best. When we returned to school, I asked the students if they would like to take some time to learn about real animals, and someone suggested we make a zoo. I loved this idea, and said we could turn our indoor space into a zoo, and we could create an outdoor zoo as well.

Outdoors, the students used snow to build walls for their animal cages, and used natural items like pinecones, sticks, and rocks to represent different kinds of food. They imagined they were animals and zookeepers, and invented zoo-related animal games (2 favourites being ‘escape from the zoo’ and ‘escape in the night’ (blindfolded hide and seek)). They loved making up pretend stories about their families and unlikely animal friend groups within the zoo.

I thought about how to make curriculum connections to the ideas of cages, food, and imaginative stories. We did lots of zoo-related area and perimeter math and coding activities. We made zoo dioramas (students purchased their supplies from a ‘zoo store’ with school money), and we took care of little pipe cleaner pets in our zoos. We watched and analysed promotional videos made by zoos in different parts of the world, and one of the videos showed us how zookeepers clean cages, care for animals, and feed them many different kinds of foods. We did mass and capacity math related to animal feed. We also watched videos about various wild animals and the foods they eat in the wild. We connected this to our science learning about energy and food chains. With new knowledge about animals’ diets, we designed animal treats (and packaging for the treats) for the animals in our zoo dioramas. We also wrote and published fiction stories about our zoo animals’ adventures. Outside we worked in groups to create other zoo stories to practise and perform as plays, using our knowledge of how zookeepers take care of animals and how animal hospitals help injured or sick animals to recover.

One day when the field was too icy to play on, we went for a community walk, imagining that we were taking a field trip to the zoo. We walked on the "wobbly bridge" (sidewalk), careful not to fall into the "crocodile pits" (neighbours' yards). Along the way, we saw giraffes (basketball nets), elephants (satellite dishes), a parrot (colourful pinwheel), flamingos (pink flags), snakes (hoses, eavestroughs), a dinosaur (a tall stack of something piled under a big green tarp), as well as bear, deer, dog, and chicken lawn decorations. We also saw some real birds!

The real bird sightings were the most exciting of all, and after that the students’ conversations and interests began shifting from the big zoo animals to specific kinds of birds they were noticing in our nonfiction books. We went out another day for a community walk specifically to look for birds and nests, and we saw many! Most exciting of all - we saw a hawk swoop down onto a driveway across the street to attack a smaller bird, watched the battle that ensued, and then chased after the hawk as it carried away its prey in its talons! We couldn’t believe what we’d seen - a real energy chain right before our eyes! We went inside to do some research about hawks, which led to research about eagles, condors, and other birds of prey.

Some students also became interested in researching smaller birds, like the mourning doves and robins we’d seen on our walk, and brightly-coloured birds like cardinals, blue jays, goldfinches, and parrots. We’d seen photos of all of these in our nonfiction books. We set up a small aviary in our classroom zoo.

We carefully observed and dissected real birds’ nests (science - energy/heat), then made plans and created our own models of birds’ nests. Inspired by the many amazing birds we’d learned about, we made plans and designed bird-kites to play with outside (science - wind energy). We also played outdoor ‘bird’ and ‘nest’ games with frisbees and different-sized balls to develop our skills for throwing and catching.

One student asked if we could get a pet bald eagle for our class. I said I loved that idea; it would be amazing to have a pet eagle to play with and see up close. Other students, however, suggested that it’s hard to catch an eagle outside, and that pet stores might not have eagles. So I opened it up for discussion: What would be the best bird to get for a pet? The students had so many different ideas. I challenged them to go home that night and think about what bird would be best, and WHY. The next day, they did a persuasive writing assignment to detail their ideas and their reasons. They presented their suggestions orally for everyone to consider. After, they created graphs of students’ top three choices, and we determined fair and square what pet we’d get - a baby chick! (Which won out over a pet blue jay by just one vote!)

We researched what would be needed to take care of a baby chick, then wrote a letter to our principal, asking for permission and sharing with her all that we knew about how to care for a pet chick. She said we could go for it!

Next, we wrote letters to a farmer who provides eggs to classrooms for hatching. She gave us 12 eggs to hatch! We learned about incubators (science - energy/electricity) and learned how a chick grows inside an egg (more science - cycles). While we waited for our chicks to hatch, we did lots of problem-solving math about eggs, chicks, feather colours, hens and roosters. We made math predictions about how many of our eggs would hatch, and how many of each colour of chick we would have. We used our calendar to count down the days until we could candle our eggs to check for growing chicks, and the day they’d finally hatch! We also wrote nonfiction books full of true facts and details about what we’d learned about hatching chicks.

One day, when reading a nonfiction book about chickens from our class collection, a student saw a picture of a baby chick eating a worm. We didn’t know chicks could eat worms! The next day during outdoor learning time, students busily worked to dig worms from the dirt. They wanted to collect worms to keep (in a suitable worm habitat) in our classroom, so that when we fed our chicks each day, we could add worms to their breakfast. We had so much fun digging for worms and learning about them during our daily research times. We learned about how worm babies are born, what worms eat, what their ‘castings’ (poop) look like, and how they move. Worms are amazing!

One student wanted to research where on our school property the most worms have been found, historically speaking. We tried a Google search...and believe it or not, we could NOT find an answer. We realized that this has NEVER been studied before! WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY! We decided that, upon returning to school after the Spring break, WE would be the first ‘wormologists’ (oligochaetologists) to do this research!

Unfortunately, due to the third wave of COVID-19, in-school learning did not resume after the Spring break. We watched our chicks hatch virtually and had a virtual chick birthday party (with lots of probability party games). We never did get to find out where the most worms can be found at our school.