Our 7th grade activity for today was to look at bones, real bones from a real human skeleton. "Mr. Bones" has been around since before Ms. B started teaching at this school, so he's been here for over 30 years. Pretty neat if you ask me. I decided it would be awesome if I could have my own authentic skeleton when I get my own classroom, so I did some research on Amazon and Ebay. It turns out that they do sell real skeletons (and it's legal), mostly for medicinal purposes. The cheapest one I could find was $1000, but they average between $2,000-$5,000. Yeah, chances are, I'm not going to buy one in the near future. Mom, Dad? My birthday's coming up...
Anyway, my 7th graders had a blast checking out the bones. Since the skull is pretty easy to identify, I had it sitting up on a chair at the front of the room to use as an example. One guy came up to me right away and asked if it was from a real person. I told him that it was, so he of course wanted to know who the person was. I had no clue, but decided to tease him a little; I said it was a former principal. He did a double take and then, "No, you're joking." Yes, I was. Then he said, "It's probably Mr. So and So." (I'm guessing one of their old principals. That's one of the things I love about 7th graders; they can actually take a joke. 4th graders tend to take everything literally and will cry at the drop of a hat.
But back to the bones... The rest of them were numbered and my students had to figure out what part of the body the bones belonged to and then had to explain their reasoning. Some were trying to stick the bones together, some got grossed out, some wanted to look at them a second time during study hall! Of course I let them do so. Overall I'd say it was a success.
No comments:
Post a Comment