This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a Madagascar hissing beetle. I enjoy going to NSTA conferences because I get to see all sorts of denizens of the animal world that I would never get a chance to view ordinarily.

During their workshop on Connecting With Animals in the Classroom, Stephanie Selznick (left) and Suzanne Flynn showed us some of their friends in the animal world and described how teachers could “create the ‘aha!’ moment for students by teaching about animals. Suzanne said treating students to the sight of a mother gerbil giving birth and nursing her baby is something students will never forget—and can inspire a love for science. “Kids love to look at and touch live things,” said Stephanie.
Teaching about animals also provides a vehicle for linking other subjects to science—and “the more links, the more thinks” for students, said Suzanne. Young children can count an animal’s legs and even create Venn diagrams about the animal’s characteristics and compare them with those of other animals, for example. That sounds much more fun than the Venn diagrams I remember doing in elementary school!
Suzanne described how teachers could use the NSTA/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Books and find other books using NSTA Recommends to integrate language arts into lessons involving animals. She praised the scientific accuracy of the books on the NSTA/CBC lists.
Stephanie told us about a 20-minute activity for fifth graders that can be used as an end-of-unit assessment. She has her students choose an animal they’ve studied and write four or five facts about it on a card. Her fourth graders have created “notebooks of cool facts” about their favorite animal, including its physical features, its favorite foods, and how it can be characterized.
Other than two insects that leaped out of their containers and had to be rescued (both successfully!), the workshop went very smoothly, and I heard many teachers say “Great session” as they prepared to leave for their next adventure.