Caption for photo: Jim Gay shows Alexandria Rose Edgar and other third-grade students at Akron's Case Elementary School how candling allows the interior of an egg to be examined. Gay is a substitute teacher hired to "coach" third-grade teachers throughout the Akron Public Schools in ChickQuest, one of OSU Extension's 4-H School Enrichment programs that the Akron school system is using to make science come alive in the classroom.

Editor: For a high-resolution copy of this photo, contact Martha Filipic at filipic.3@cfaes.osu.edu.

AKRON, Ohio -- Katrina Halasa loves to read e-mails from Akron's third-grade teachers as they're running Ohio 4-H's ChickQuest program in their classrooms.

"It's exciting and new, they're exchanging ideas and sharing what's going on in their classrooms," said Halasa, the science learning specialist (kindergarten through high school) for Akron Public Schools. "The thing about ChickQuest is that it's a full curriculum of 18 lessons applying science, math, language arts -- we're seeing the students develop critical thinking skills, and that's always exciting."

ChickQuest is an Ohio 4-H school enrichment program. Introduced in late 2008, it incorporates concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). It challenges third-grade students to investigate the lifecycle of egg-laying animals while monitoring the 21-day incubation period of an embryonic chicken egg and observing the chicks that hatch. The program is different from a traditional embryology curriculum in that it incorporates a daily science lesson geared to Ohio's academic standards.

"We do hands-on science in the classroom all the time," Halasa said. "But this takes kids through the scientific thinking process, through critical thinking. It's amazing, just amazing. It has a hands-on component, yes, but it also has life. When one student saw a chick break open from the shell, he said 'This is a miracle.' They gain an understanding that things are alive, and it awakens a bit of their humanity as they're studying science."

Halasa first learned of ChickQuest at a statewide introductory workshop sponsored by Ohio State University Extension's 4-H program in November 2008. When Akron schools received a STEM K-8 Excellence Grant of close to $196,000 from the Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric D. Fingerhut in 2009, Halasa used a portion of the funds to purchase materials for ChickQuest and another "Science Alive" 4-H School Enrichment project, Rockets Away.

Seventy-four teachers and 1,761 third-grade students at 36 elementary schools in Akron's public school system are involved in the ChickQuest program. Teachers get a 68-page teacher guide taking them step-by-step through ChickQuest, and all students receive their own 52-page logbook in which they list hypotheses, record observations and learn about lifecycles of egg-bearing animals. Halasa also used the grant to pay for professional development programs in spring 2009, then followed up in spring 2010 by hiring substitutes with science backgrounds as "coaches" for teachers to set up incubators, brooders and candling. In addition, the coaches presented ideas and answered students' questions in the classrooms.

Halasa is working with OSU Extension 4-H educator Jackie Krieger, whose participation is key to the success of ChickQuest programming in Akron. She is the one who invited Halasa to the 2008 workshop and who now offers tireless support to the project.

"ChickQuest has established a new standard of excellence when we look at group projects," Krieger said. "Third-graders are collecting data, taking measurements, making observations. They are more of a participant in the learning instead of an observer. When some of the classes did the Rockets Away program in the fall, they were quoting Newton's Laws of Motion -- this is the third grade. It's so worthwhile to have kids have these 'aha' moments day after day after day."

Halasa said partnering with local 4-H professionals for the projects is invaluable. "They have the connections we need -- they know where we can get eggs and incubators, and they opened up all these resources in the community to us. Many teachers were aware of 4-H, but did not realize how to take advantage of 4-H for the classroom. This partnership is opening up doors for a lot of other opportunities and resources for us."

Bob Horton, OSU Extension specialist in educational design and science education, directed the development of ChickQuest.

"Embryology programs have always been a great capstone-type program in the classroom," Horton said. "They're relatively easy to administer, and there's a real gee-whiz factor with the incubator and the understanding of the lifecycle. It has all the perfect parts, and now, with ChickQuest, it is built around the state science standards, and it has the added benefit of building in technology and engineering considerations."

Halasa said students and teachers alike were equally affected as chicks hatched. In one case, one of the chicks was born quite weak and rapidly went downhill; the teacher and students were moved as they watched the other chicks cuddled closely to the weak chick "as if to comfort him and keep him warm … they have not left him alone for hours," the teacher wrote in an e-mail to Halasa.

"That's something I really didn't expect, but I appreciate so much -- the humanity that surfaces in this project," Halasa said. "The students start to realize that science and life are intertwined."

Both Krieger and Halasa say ChickQuest is ideal to help today's young people step toward becoming science-literate adults.

"We live with science and technology every day," Krieger said. "For elementary school students, programs like ChickQuest and Rockets Away open their eyes to begin to understand how our world works."

Halasa added, "We are growing a generation of students steeped in STEM -- science, technology, engineering, math and medicine -- and those fields will be booming in the next few years. Programs like this will prepare students for those fields, but even more, it will help students who don't go into those fields have a greater understanding of those concepts, and will help them be better citizens."

Since being introduced, OSU Extension has sold more than 700 copies of "ChickQuest: The Scientific Journey through a Life Cycle (Teacher Guide)" and more than 6,000 copies of the "ChickQuest Logbook" for students. They are available for purchase at OSU Extension's online store, http://estore.osu-extension.org.

For more information about ChickQuest and other 4-H School Enrichment Programs, contact Bob Horton at 614-247-8150 or horton.2@cfaes.osu.edu, or see http://www.ohio4h.org/sciencealive/.

Writers

Martha Filipic
filipic.3@cfaes.osu.edu
614-292-9833

Sources

Katrina Halasa, Akron Public Schools
khalasa@akron.k12.oh.us
330-761-3117

Jackie Krieger, OSU Extension, 4-H Youth Development
krieger.50@osu.edu
330-928-4769

Bob Horton, OSU Extension, 4-H Youth Development
horton.2@cfaes.osu.edu
614-247-8150