From a Little Tragedy...To a Big Opportunity

A week ago, I had the privilege of turning a small classroom tragedy into an exciting new opportunity to support student learning.  I our half day kindergarten classes we have been doing a FOSS science unit of study on animals. In this portion of the unit, I had been teaching the students about goldfish.  The first lesson consisted of making a class list of what we already know about goldfish, and what we hope to find out about these fish.  The highlight of the lesson was the observation portion, in which each small table group was given their own goldfish to name and observe.  The students were mesmerized by these simple fish. 

The next morning, the students came to school with a new energy and excitement for learning science.  They couldn’t wait to see their fish again.  When it came time to observe the fish a second time, the students were distraught to notice that one of their beloved fish had died and was floating belly up.  One student said with a cry, “look at his little face…it’s just not fair!”  Another student insisted that we flush the fish down our classroom toilet as soon as possible, because that is what her parents do at her house and “that’s the only way to get rid of a dead fish.”  After a moment of  thinking to myself “oh my goodness, what should I do about this” I had an idea of a way to turn our little tragedy into an opportunity. 

Since the next part of the lesson consisted of my showing them a book on the parts of a fish and us labeling them on chart paper, I told them that the fish that died was going to be our “special helper fish” …and how lucky we were that it passed away.  I further explained to the students that the fish must have know that we were going to study its parts and that we could learn so much more from looking at an actual fish as opposed to a page in a book.  “This fish will help us get smarter, and smarter,” I told the class.  I then turned out the lights, put our special fish under the document camera and hit the focus button to enlarge him so that the whole class could see his parts. 
Now instead of seeing “gills” in a book, they could see the actual gills of their fish.  I also grabbed sticky notes and asked the students if they could name a part of the fish.  One by one, I wrote down their students answers on the sticky notes and let them come up and place the stick note label on the whiteboard, which displayed their actual fish. The tears had dried up and they were so engaged and excited to label our fish friend.  While it wasn’t the best scenario that we lost a fish, having this dead goldfish and thinking quickly on my feet, allowed me to support and enhance student learning in a different and unexpected way.