In Biology we dissect sharks. We do this not so students can have a two week free-for-all with a dead fish of their very own; students dissect sharks and examine their anatomy in an evolutionary context, explaining how natural selection and other evolutionary forces shape what organisms look like. It's a smelly time, with lots of squeals of delight and disgust, much clanking of dissecting tools on the large baking pans I bought off eBay for them to dissect upon, and a lot of really bad jokes told by yours truly ("Why is your shark frowning? Because it's dead." "Alright, people, this is going to go like shop class--take it apart and put it back together--and make it run.").
In the past when I have prepared for this unit, I have micromanaged every bit of their time, planned every structure they will have to identify on their small stinky sharks, provided all of the necessary diagrams and pictures, and designed every last progress check and dissection quiz to the last detail.
This year I didn't do any of that. Mainly because I was short on time, but also because I wanted them to actually enjoy the experience instead of having all the fun sucked out of it with my type-A compulsive overplanning.
Instead, I told them to read the articles in the first section of this diigo list, highlighting and sticky-noting the web pages, summarizing the process of natural selection. Then, I gave each team a shark, gave them a list of structures to identify from the major body systems, and then told them this:
"Explain why your shark looks like it does on the inside and outside in terms of natural selection. Put this explanation in a blog post on your portfolio."
On the first day of dissection, I handed out the sharks, my students gave their sharks names (Dirk and Francois were my faves this year), and lastly I showed them how to make the needed incisions in order for them to reveal the shark parts they would need to identify.
And then I stepped back and got out of the way of their learning for a few days.
I watched them make hesitant cuts and inspections of their shark's innards as if they were expecting the shark to back to suddenly rise from the dead and slap them with a pectoral fin or two; I watched them compare each other's sharks that were the same yet different; I watched them pull out entire fish from shark stomachs to the delight of some and to the "OMG I think I might see my lunch again" of others.
But I also listened. I listened to them asking each other questions.
"Why do I have an entire fish in the stomach, but she has just beige goo?"
"What's up with this spiral thing in the intestine?"
"Why is its digestive system so short?"
"THAT's it's kidney? Why doesn't it look like a kidney?"
"Wait a minute--there's no bladder. Why doesn't it have a bladder?"
At each question, I heard the tippity-tap of (hopefully) clean hands on netbooks, trying to find the answers. If that didn't work, they turned to me--who annoyingly just asked them more questions. ("Why do you think you have a bladder? What goes in a bladder? Where does what goes in a bladder go eventually? So why wouldn't a shark need a bladder?" This series of questions eventually resulted in the gross realization that, yes, sharks just pee right in the water. I'll spare you the conversation that was had after they found out baby sharks, poop, and pee all emerge from the same shark opening.)
In previous years I never heard any of those questions, because I was too busy drowning them out with my planning of all the stuff they were supposed to learn. The questions I heard this week were the sound of learning--learning coming from the learners, not planned and canned by me.
I let them take their learning in any direction they wanted, as long as they pulled it back together under the umbrella of natural selection. But their questions really made me see that I didn't have to be afraid to let them have control--that learning can and will happen without me right by its side, frantically clutching a lesson plan and making sure the learning I want is happening at a predetermined time.
Sometimes we have to let students lead the learning. And real learning often starts with questions generated by the smaller people who have to do it.
I'm now toying with the idea that I should start next school year with this smelly old unit, making evolution an underlying theme throughout the year--and letting students practice having control over where they take their learning. It still needs some refining (I would like it to take on more of a comparative anatomy flavor), but I think it this is one of my crazy ideas that just might work.
I also think this experience really emphasizes the need for teachers to plan for learning to happen, and not always plan (or overplan, in my case) the learning itself.