The ducklings are here! The ducklings are here!
Fourth-graders in Stacey Venzel’s class at PBE have been studying the development of ducklings for a few weeks. It hasn’t all gone smoothly. Despite numerous incubator malfunctions – they went through four incubators! – six of the 12 ducklings hatched!
“We were very happy with the 50 percent hatch rate,” said Ms. Venzel, noting that the electrical issues they faced helped everyone involved practice patience, problem-solving and statistics!
The electrical outages were likely to cause both a decreased and delayed hatch rate, Ms. Venzel said, which had the class altering their predictions for hatch rate as well as updating the 28-day hatch calendar.
They ended up with three Ancona ducks, one black runner and two fawn-and-white runners. Students voted on names and there are official duckling “birth” certificates documenting their titles: Dawn, Eggabelle, Midnight, Jalen Duckson (after New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson), Quackers, and Lemon.
The ducks will go to their forever farm with the Parsons family this week. Christina Parsons is a teaching assistant at PBE so that connection will always be there!
As part of the incubation project, students compared human anatomy to duck anatomy. During the human body unit, the class was split into two teams and students were tasked with re-assembling a human body model. The activity was entirely student directed – from scientific accuracy to reading fluency with the instructions to conflict resolution among group members. The was a great hands-on addition to the Mystery Science unit. The kits came with plastic hemostats and tweezers, giving students an interactive callback to the board game “Operation.”
Ducklings aren’t the only things hatching in this PBE classroom. There are a couple of weeks left before their emu eggs hatch. Yes, emus!! They are being nurtured for sure – some students read a book about emus to the emu eggs. They are turning them multiple times a day by hand as part of the incubation process because emu eggs, which are bigger than avocados, are too big for most automatic egg turners. More to come as we excitedly await the hatching of the emus!
