Education and agriculture students at Ivy Tech Community College are involved in an interdisciplinary project – hatching chicks in an incubator.
The education students taking a course titled Cognitive Curriculum, taught by Brenda Ragle, chair of the early childhood education program, study brain development and curriculum for young children. The incubator project can be used in an early childhood classroom to engage children in learning and provide opportunities to integrate literacy, science, and math activities. The eggs and chicks become an inquiry project and student teachers practice the scientific processes of observing, creating hypothesis, making predictions, recording, and classifying.
The agriculture students are involved in the poultry unit of the Introduction to Animal Science course, taught by Matthew John, chair of the agriculture program, in which they are studying embryology, reproduction, requirements for incubation, caring for chicks, and poultry science.