Maya McFadden Photos
East Rock seventh grader Jeryl searches for frog's large intestines...
...while others check out the frog's tongue and teeth.
East Rock School seventh graders Leia and Lesly suited up in gloves and eye protection to pierce through the unexpectedly tough skin of a frog — and discover, through hands-on education, what a real three-lobed liver looks like.
That was the scene Wednesday morning in the second-floor science classroom of teacher Laurie Fisher.
It represented a veteran educator’s commitment to ensuring that students don’t have to wait to high school to get their hands dirty, so to speak, with lab work — while encouraging a deeper understanding of anatomy and of the body parts, hearts and lungs and livers, that humans and other living creatures have in common.
The seventh-grade class of 22 students spent their Wednesday lab period getting a hands-on look at life sciences through the daunting task of frog dissection.
Before the classroom filled with the smell of frog guts, Fisher offered her students several warnings and tips for the dissection process.
First, she prepped the students for the strong smell that would come from frogs once cut open.
Next, she recommended they each set aside any sweaters or extra clothing items they did not want to be stained in the process.
Each pair of students then grabbed plastic forceps, scissors, eye protection, and a magnifying glass.
A graphic provided to the students as they searched for different organs during the dissection.
The group began with reviewing a diagram labeled with the frog’s organs and body parts. They next wrote down observations they made of each of their frogs.
Several pairings came up with names for their frogs like “Little Jim Bob” or “Uncle Drew.”
Others noted that the frog looked old, cold, and dead.
While continuing on with their initial observation sheet, students revisited vocabulary words they learned throughout the unit like “upper extremities.” They also learned in this class about different types of frogs, such as the leopard frog and the bullfrog.
Next, the class suited up in blue disposable gloves and Fisher guided them through making their first cuts …
"So Much Better Than Watching A Video"
Seventh grader Charlie makes first cut.
After they got over their nerves, the student pairs dived into cutting out the inner organs of the frogs.
They made connections between the frogs’ organs and their own by getting a closer look at each frog’s heart, stomach, and kidney.
Students identified each inner organ, and then used their scissors to remove it. While sitting across from each other, seventh graders Charlie and Yadrine noted additional observations like that the large intestines resemble linguini, and the heart resembles “gandules,” also know as a pigeon peas.
Others discussed theories of why a heart shape does not look more like the heart organ.
In between cutting their frogs’ liver lobes out, partners Leia and Lesly discovered that what they had learned about frogs having three liver lobes was in fact true.
“It’s so much better than watching a video, seeing it in front of me makes it feel more real,” Lesly noted.
While continuing to identify the gallbladder and intestines, some students concluded that “I never want to be a frog.”
After removing the liver, the students went on to find fat bodies which they spotted quickly because of their yellow string-like look. One student said the fat bodies looked like ground beef while another compared them to spiderwebs.
“Find me the intestines and kidney,” Fisher instructed the students while visiting each pairing throughout the period.
She then asked them about which bodily system each organ was connected to.
“What system is the heart a part of?” Fisher quizzed the students.
One student raised their hand to answer “circulatory system.”
“And the lungs?” Fisher continued. “The respiratory system,” another student called out.
While trio Nayala, Marlin, and Lool worked together, Nayala removed the frogs’ fat bodies. “Wow that’s a lot of fat,” Lool noted.
“No body shaming the frog,” Marlin reminded.
"We All Need To Know About Bodies"
Seventh graders Raven and Autumn with their frog organ findings.
During Wednesday’s lesson partners Raven and Autumn agreed that they thought the frog would be a lot scarier in person. They overcame that fear within a mattero minutes.
“The video made it seem like it wasn’t a hassle, but the frog was a lot harder [to cut] than I expected,” Raven said.
From the thick skin to the hard-to-cut intestines and liver, the duo said the process was not exactly the same as what they thought it would be based on a video they watched in class before the dissection.
“The body parts were just stronger than they looked in the video. And the video looked nastier than it actually was,” Autumn said.
The added that they learned more from doing the hands-on activity than they did by just watching a dissection on video.
Whoa!
Seventh graders Charlie, Jeryl, Kymere, and Yadrine also agreed the dissection activity Wednesday was easier than expected once they first got over their nerves and stomach nausea from the smell.
“Everything just spilled out,” Charlie said.
Kymere noted that he had expected there to be more blood but was glad to see there wasn’t.
They were surprised by their closer looks at the frogs’ eye lids and the discovery that a frog does not have a rib cage.
Top: Nayala, Marlin, Lool, Lesly, and Leia. Bottom: Yadrine, Charlie, Jeryl, and Kymere.
At another table seventh grader Nayala, Marlin, Lool, Lesly, and Leia sat together. They observed Wednesday that not only was the the frogs skin tougher than expected but that the organs were a lot smaller and slimy than they imagined.
The all agreed the hands-on activity was enjoyable because “science is much more interesting than any other classes,” Marlin said.
“This showed us anatomy, which is important because we all need to know about bodies,” Leia said.
Before Wednesday’s class dismissed for lunch, Fisher walked the students through the concluding review questions and how to remove their gloves correctly.
Science educator Laurie Fisher.
This year is Fisher’s third year at East Rock School. The Brooklyn transplant has over 20 years of teaching experience. She said the transition to working at the Nash Street middle school has been seamless, in part because of the district’s use of a hands-on Smithsonian science curriculum.
Her goal Wednesday was for the students to revisit their learning about bodily systems and see similarities between the parts of the frog and human body parts. She said the dissection lesson is one the students have been looking forward to since the start of the year.
“This is the type of lesson where it doesn’t matter what level they are because they can all learn from it,” Fisher said.
She concluded that she didn’t do dissection in science until she was a freshmen in high school. “Life sciences is so important for them to be introduced to in middle school,” she said. From learning about blood flow to seeing a real liver, she aims for her students to make connections about how their own bodies work.
Next the class will learn about genes, DNA chromosomes, and the reproductive system through a unit focused on growing Wisconsin Fast Plants.