Teaching & Learning | Case Studies of Integrated Teaching | Leeming PS

School Snapshots - Leeming Primary School
Integrating Through Science Projects

• Description of Integration

• Extending a Chicken Project into Technology & Enterprise and Mathematics
  

Description of Integration

The students in Janette Hamill's Year 7 class at Leeming Primary School do very exciting and interesting Science lessons. The Science support teacher, Penny Kelliher, who is also the Deputy Principal, is passionate about teaching Science to primary students.

Penny says that with primary - aged students she is more concerned about developing their understanding of scientific process and their love of Science rather than scientific facts.

The regular classroom teacher, Janette, is also a positive and enthusiastic teacher, however she has limited experience teaching Science at the upper primary level and is delighted to have Penny take the Science lessons in her classroom. Each Science project or activity that the class do is integrated with other learning areas as the teachers feel appropriate.

Extending a Chicken Project into Technology & Enterprise and Mathematics

In term 2 of 1998 the Year 7 class did a Science project on raising chickens. Fertilized chicken eggs were obtained from a nearby hatchery and brought to the classroom and put in an incubator. The students were responsible for caring for the eggs and the chickens and they kept a diary as the eggs matured and the chickens hatched.

The project was integrated with Technology & Enterprise by having the students design, make and appraise a model chicken feeder, a model water trough and a chicken weighing device.

Mathematics also was integrated with the chicken project by having the students weigh the chickens each day using the weighing device they had made and recording and graphing their results.

One of the benefits of the chicken project, according to the teachers, was that the enthusiasm the students had for their chickens could be redirected into the other learning areas. For example, the Mathematics and Technology & Enterprise activities became relevant and real for the students.

The level of enthusiasm in the class was very high and the students were obviously totally devoted to the care and study of their chickens. The teachers integrated topics from other learning areas into the Science project including aspects of health when working with animals and writing activities.

When one chicken sadly died, the teacher read to the class a book about the cycle of life and discussed death as part of this natural cycle. The teachers commented that one of the unexpected outcomes for the students was that they learnt to be gentle and caring and showed that they were mature enough to look after the chickens.