The students in my school are simply amazing! They are in 5th through 8th grade at a rural Oklahoma middle school. They love to learn, have new experiences, participate in various activities, socialize, and accept new challenges. Our student body comes from all over the globe and they vary in their learning styles and abilities. We have a rapidly growing number of military students, a high population of Native American students, and several students are from right here in Oklahoma. Our great school also has many high achieving students, a Title I program, and we practice inclusion for special needs students. Our school promotes academic success utilizing unique experiences. We strive to make learning fun, rigorous, and relevant each and every day while also focusing on building the character of our students.
My Project
We would like to begin a collaborative project working with arachnids in the classroom. My colleague keeps tarantulas and other insects in her classroom, including Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, and claims they are perfect pets for students to observe. They talk about the different places the creatures come from and try to replicate their natural environments. Not only is this a learning experience, it is also is a great conversation starter between teachers and students and helps build relationships.
We would like to add more tarantulas and feeders to our classrooms and expand what students can learn.
We will breed Dubia Roaches to feed our class tarantulas and use the roaches to earn income for additional tarantulas supplies. We will do this by selling roaches to other teachers who keep lizards. By breeding our own food source, we will be learning about responsibility and resourcefulness. As a math extension, we will calculate how many roaches our class needs to produce to supplement the diet of the other reptiles and figure out what we will charge to make enough money to fund the upkeep of our tarantulas. We will learn science concepts such as basic genetic concepts, reproduction time, temperature and humidity monitoring, and appropriate habitats as well. As reading instruction, we will research species to gain information needed to be responsible pet owners.
Our final goal is to build our habitats. This STEM activity will provide an opportunity for teachers and students to interact and learn about setting up enclosures for our pets. This learning experience is unique and will provide a platform for learning life skills in a hands-on manner.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. West and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
