Teachers Model Thinking: a new bee unit

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“Bees!” a teacher shrieked at our monthly curriculum planning meeting. “How are we going to teach bees to little kids, Helen?” I could see the eyes rolling back in the heads of other staff members. She was not the only one appalled at my latest brainstorm for a new science unit. “Well, we’ve never done bees,” I continued. “I think it would be fun to do something completely new. We’d have to create the whole thing from scratch.” “Yes, but Helen, bees sting kids! And half the kids are deathly afraid of them,” offered a teacher whose sensitivity I respect. “As well they should be,” muttered Mandy, an Aide. “Well, but that’s the point. We’d teach them how wonderful they are. How useful they are to mankind, you know, pollination and honey. I read a great book years ago called City of the Bees about the life of the hive. Plus, Camp Joy, (the local organic teaching farm), is always a great field trip, we haven’t been there this year and Jim would show us the honey extraction and the hive boxes.”

There was an anxious pause in the normally relaxed free flow of ideas at the staff meeting, as the idea sunk in that I was probably serious. And if I was to be deterred, someone was going to have to do some fast talking.

Thus began one of our most creative units as I look back over the years of outrageous hands-on science units. But this one turned out to be particularly creative precisely because we created it all, that spring, from scratch. We the teachers thrilled over all the new facts together with our students. Modeling how to find information and learning by discovery were not a pretence this time around. We as teacher/learners were delighted with each new discovery. Our enthusiasm was contagious, just as it should be in the best of teaching environments. The teacher’s passion for the subject infects the students.

“Just how does the bee make honey from pollen, Helen?” A grade five succinctly queried me one day as we were both intent on a bee science book on my lap at “Silent Reading Period.” Lord, if I know. “I think that is the question, Matthew, that we’ve got to find out.” And sure enough there, in one of the library books, a few days latter, was a description of the process. It had something to do with the chemicals in the bee’s stomach and regurgitation. The children were delighted—honey by spit up! And just how does the scout bees’ dance tell the rest of the hive where the pollen laden flowers are located? That answer I don’t remember, but I do remember the 20-minute act- out we did one day at Music Time. The 3 children playing the scout bees had no problem creating a descriptive dance signaling the whereabouts of the pollen-ripe flowers. There was a role for everyone; tough guard bees protecting the entrance from intruders, nurse bees feeding the larvae, a few drones lazing about needing only to fertilize the queen for her essential egg laying tasks, and lots of worker bees, cleaning the hive, grooming the queen, gathering pollen in their special pollen baskets attached to their hind legs and collecting nectar to feed the lot, and then the queen herself lying about in splendor. 25 young children in an improvised drama all going about their roles in a serious manner, taken directly from natural science. It was an impressive sight.

What does the pollen bread that the nurse bees feed to the baby larvae really taste like? For that we had “bee bread” for snack one day, each child playing nurse bee by mixing granules of pollen with drops of honey. Yummy! And for art one day we did pictures of the honeycomb with the baby larvae inside. Chicken wire, we discovered in a moment of inspiration, made the perfect six-sided shape of the honeycomb cells. All could do the crayon rubbings with added colouration, and some made detailed pencil drawings of the larvae in each octagon of the comb cell. These art works were marveled by all, so careful, so full of information, so creative.

The teachers’ own creative thinking skills were ignited. Modeling thought and creativity in the classroom truly are major teacher functions. Teaching by example, one of the oldest tenants in education, is all too often a hollow dictate in primary classrooms. The teachers had to dream up all these activities to illustrate the facts that we were just discovering. Thus the creative juices were flying back and forth among the teachers themselves and among the children. Teaching people how to think is the business of schools.

Original thinking is the only kind of thinking that really counts in the big world, outside of schools. And that is precisely what we were modeling for our students. Thus teaching “Bees” was just the cover, the overt curriculum. Thinking and creative expressions of ideas; the drama, the dance, the art, the stories, some* call it the children’s other voices, was what it was really all about. Transparent thinking is absolutely invaluable as a means of showing the child how the thinking process works. Kids do innately have strong intellectual and creative abilities, I strongly believe, but unappreciated by lack of adult models and they all too often fall by the wayside.

* Gallas, Karen, The Languages of Learning, How Children Talk, Write, Dance, Draw, and Sing Their Understanding of the World.

Helen Defosset was the Founder and Director of a private Pre-School/Kindergarten for 26 years. Teaching in inner city primary classes and pre-schools preceded a move to the country. A rural mountain community with no pre-school ignited her dream to start a school, one that really teaches. This article is from Little People’s School, a book in progress about that school.