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Curiosity is an innate emotion or impulse that allows us to explore and discover new experiences that transform our perceptions of the world and everything around us. Designing learning experiences that stimulate young people’s curiosity to investigate and discover new knowledge during their high school formative stage is essential. Laboratory practices are ideal for generating experiential learning activities that connect them with reality and develop scientific competency. The “Chicken Laboratory Practice” is a closing activity of my course that seeks to strengthen scientific competency. In this activity, students put their theoretical knowledge to the test in actual practice. In this article, I share my experience.
Through the PrepaTec “Health and Society” course for second-semester students, I help them a) develop scientific competency and b) assume the social and personal responsibility they have for learning through the chicken laboratory practice. This activity familiarizes them with a chicken’s anatomical structure by identifying the vertebrate’s internal organs, shape, texture, location, and other aspects. Moreover, the students corroborate to understand how various internal apparatus and systems work and interrelate. This knowledge is acquired theoretically and practically during the course.
“The students commented that it was a fun and interactive activity that kept them attentive throughout class. In the laboratory practice, they learned how a chicken’s tissues, organs, and systems appear and are located, facilitating their learning about an organism’s body.”
The Chicken Laboratory Practice
This activity aims to reaffirm all the theoretical knowledge that the students acquired throughout the semester and allow them to test it in an experimental practice.
The activity, which involved 66 students, took place in the science laboratory of the PrepaTec Morelia campus. The course’s closing practice integrates knowledge about the structure, identification, classification, and function of different chicken tissues, organs, and systems. Students must also investigate, inquire, observe, contrast, classify, and report findings and experiences.
Instructions
Students organize into teams comprising five to seven members. Each team must bring a whole chicken, including viscera, head, and legs. Students purchased it in the chicken shop and must not be open-carcass because the activity intends to identify the arrangement of the anatomical structures (tissues, organs, and systems). In the laboratory, each team uses the following materials: 1) two dissection trays, 2) a scalpel, 3) a saw, 4) and gloves for each member.
Likewise, the team assigns one of its members exclusively to take photographs. Notably, the photographer will not touch the chicken for hygiene reasons and to avoid contaminating their cell phone.
The class received clarification that the chicken used in this practice is not suitable for human consumption due to its handling. Also, the chicken leftovers will be donated to an animal protection association to avoid waste and collaborate with the community. They were very enthusiastic to learn this and that the “Health and Society” course promotes their personal and social responsibility assumption for their training competency.
Procedure
The chicken is placed on one of the trays, and a cut is made under the breast to expose the viscera, which the students must remove carefully to avoid damaging them. These organs are placed in the second tray. Once this procedure has been completed, they are asked to identify the structures of all the chicken systems reviewed in class. They must identify the tissues and organs they extract from the chicken’s cavities.
The team photographer must snap a photo of each organ separated (e.g., liver, muscle, skin, bones, intestine, kidneys, and lungs). Each organ or tissue is classified in its corresponding system or apparatus; the photograph with the name is placed in the assigned space in the laboratory report. Through this activity, students strengthen their course disciplinary competency because the pictures of the chicken’s various anatomical structures must be identified and classified in their corresponding level of organization, such as tissues, organs, and systems. For example, the lung photos are placed in the space assigned to the respiratory system and the small intestine in the digestive system. The students must prepare a team report with the photographs organized within the corresponding system.
An essential teacher action in this practice is to emphasize to the class that the chicken used in this practice is not suitable for human consumption because of its total handling. However, parts of the chicken can be used as food for other animals, such as the legs, breasts, thighs, livers, gizzards, and wings. The chicken parts are classified, organized into bags, and finally donated to an animal protection association called Adoptamor, which has about 40 rescued dogs. This action promotes awareness of resource management and the sense of societal responsibility everyone should have in this interconnected and interdependent world, as UNESCO remarked (2015).
Before the Adoptamor Association staff visited the school facilities, we invited teachers and students to donate croquettes voluntarily. On campus, the leftover chicken and the croquettes that had been received were delivered.
Results
The students applied all their theoretical knowledge acquired throughout the semester in an experimental practice. Hands-on visualization enabled them to correct misconceptions, such as confusing the chicken’s similar-appearing liver and lungs. The students’ theoretical conceptions of internal organs can be vague and only sometimes coincide with reality. However, in this practice, for example, they checked an organ’s location, cavity, color, shape, etc. They deduced that it could not be a lung because it was located in the abdominal cavity, not the thoracic. This experience allowed them to learn about the anatomical structures of a vertebrate animal, in this case, a chicken.
Approximately 75% of the students who participated in this practice highlighted it in their evidence portfolio as the most significant semester activity corresponding to scientific thinking within the disciplinary competencies.
Reflection
The students considered the chicken laboratory practice a significant learning activity because it was fun. It allowed them to visualize, touch, feel, and organize the different anatomical structures of the chicken reviewed during the course, thus reaffirming the knowledge acquired in class.
Students in advanced semesters and even graduates still remember the high school “chicken practice.” Enthusiastically, they told the students about taking the “Health and Society” course and that they would have the opportunity to perform “the chicken practice.” This educational exercise, where students learn and experience new sensations through seeing and touching an animal’s internal organs, is a practice that has led some to reaffirm their choice of professional career; it is an experience to remember.
Therefore, I invite teachers to continue designing experimental learning activities that allow students to develop the competencies intended in their courses. Consider that they do not necessarily have to be new activities; you may need to make minor adjustments to the activities you already know. I also extend the invitation to share your results so that we can all learn and report the experiences in our classes through The Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education at Tecnologico de Monterrey.
About the Author
María del Pilar Ponce Cincire (maria.ponce@tec.mx) is a Biologist, with a Master’s Degree in Education with a focus on Counseling and Educational Development from Tecnologico de Monterrey. She has over 25 years of teaching experience and is a workshop leader and speaker at education congresses. She is currently a full-time professor of Science at the PrepaTec Morelia campus.
References
Frade, L. (2019). Competency-based planning. Educational intelligence: Mexico.
DeSeCo (2005). The definition and selection of key competencies, executive summary, OECD. UNESCO (2015). Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? UNESCO: Paris.
Editing
Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Editor of the Edu bits articles and producer of The Observatory webinars- “Learning that inspires” – Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education at Tec de Monterrey.
Translation
Daniel Wetta
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
