Teamchomabelents
Nixa kindergarten teacher turns
surplus of hissing cockroaches
into hands-on lessons.
John Thomas School of Discovery kindergarten
teacher Susan Hansche turns everything into a
teachable moment. So when a student donated a
terrarium of Madagascar hissing cockroaches to the
school for class pets, Hansche started thinking of
ways to incorporate it into the day’s lesson.
The small terrarium, with what she was told contained
four cockroaches, arrived in early January. Upon further
inspection, however, Hansche discovered about 50 cockroaches
of all sizes.
“We’re making the most of teachable moments. So
we did research,” she said, asking a student what that
research yielded.
“The males hiss and have bumps on their heads and the
girls don’t,” kindergartner Autumn Scanlon said.
That fact allowed the students to
determine how many males and
females they had.
“We defi nitely have a couple
big males and females. One female
is particularly fat, so we’re
wondering if it’s getting ready to
have babies,” Hansche said.
One question led to another and
Hansche’s lesson plans for the day
were thrown out the window.
“The way we teach at JTSD is try to teach as much as
we can through inquiry. Kids generate questions on how
the world works,” said Hansche, explaining what is known
as project-based learning. “We’re taking real life problems
and ideas and doing real-life meaningful things with them.”
Their problem on this particular day is that the classroom
had a surplus of Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
So, that meant more research.
“We actually have a couple good-size lizards in the
school as class pets,” Hansche said. “We sent out an email
that said, here’s our situation and we’d like to offer some
of our smaller, surplus cockroaches as treats. We got two
responses for two adult-sized bearded dragons.”
The students discovered that the reptiles couldn’t eat
just any of the cockroaches, but only particular ones.
“The adults are too large and have an exoskeleton.
Lily, what’s an exoskeleton?” Hansche asked.
“It’s the bones on the top of their skin,” Lily
McGowan said.
Students also learned that bearded
dragons cannot eat insects larger than the
length of space between their eyes.
Sarah
Scott
8 THE NEST NIXA PUBLIC SCHOOLS MAGAZINE SPRING 2018