The votes are in... pigs are cool!

Earlier this semester, I decided I would teach my 4th graders some lessons on agriculture.  To better accommodate their interests, I had them take a two question survey.  One question was about how I am doing as a teacher (according to them, I'm perfect and I don't need to work on anything... I wish they were the ones giving me a grade!) and the other question was "What do you want to learn about farming?"  These responses were a bit more interesting:

How much profit do they get for an average year?
How do farmers get the stuff they need for farming?
How do you get hay in hay lofs?
How do you take care of an animal if it HATES you?
What do farmers do to pass the time away?
I want to learn how do animals get pregnant?

And the best question of all...  "how do you get the meat and stuff out of the pig without killing them, or do they have to be dead?"

Yeah, that should be a fun conversation.

I taught the first "ag" lesson to my class today.  I had made a Farmyard ABC book for a class last semester and decided it would be a good place to start with my 4th graders.  I added a few more pictures and braced myself for the onslaught of questions and comments that would be generated by the epic-ness of farming.

I was not disappointed.  In the last two minutes of class, I squeezed in a quick assessment to see if they were listening; my 4th graders' task was to write a sentence on a post-it note describing which alphabet letter was their favorite and why.  Here are some of the responses I received:

 The letter M- Moo- "Moo- because my grampa has cow and they licked me all the time."
The letter U- Uh-oh- "When the sheep jumped the fence."
The letter Q- Quack- "Q- I like aquatic birds."

The letter "I" got many responses, but I assumed that would be the case since "I" is for Icky Cow Pies.  Most of them chose this letter because "it was funny." But a few of my 4th graders actually put some thought into it...
"Ikey because they throw it in guardens."
"Ikey because they throw it in there feilds." 

The second most common letter was O- Oink!
"About the pigs because they have so many and that they give us backen [bacon]."
"The pigs how they are smart like us."
"I liked the pigs because I know a lot about them and I still found out more about them."

I wonder what the other class will think... tune in on Wednesday to find out!