Fourth-grade students at Gilles-Sweet Elementary will be talking about this lesson until the cows come home.
Hannah Dudra’s classroom is connecting many math and science concepts for students through Maisey, a Holstein dairy cow the classroom adopted through the Discover Dairy program.
The idea to adopt Maisey was tied to a science lesson from last year, when Dudra’s third-grade class students wondered if a cow could survive in space.
“Last year, we did this whole unit about could we bring a cow to space,” Dudra said with a laugh. “We talked about how your bones need calcium and how we need to get calcium to the astronauts. They came up with all these ways to see if bringing a cow to space was feasible. We found out, no, it’s not. But when I saw the opportunity to bring cows back into the classroom, I knew it was something highly engaging.”
Back here on Earth, Maisey lives on the Four Pines Farm in Tuscawaras county, owned and operated by the fifth-generation farmers, the Deetz family. The Discover Dairy program connects classrooms with cows from across the Midwest and provides free lesson plan ideas in science, math, and reading.
With Maisey as a guide, Dudra’s classroom recently learned about local economics, dietary requirements and needs, and what farm life is really like. In October, Maisey also helped students learn about local Farm to School practices with help from Food Service Coordinator Diana Hill.
“Most recently, we did a lesson on what makes a cow happy,” Dudra expressed. “So, it’s having a clean, safe environment, which the Deetz family farm does a really awesome job with. They have individual pens for each cow, and their farm is really centered around caring for these cows rather than the bulk industry you might see.”
This year, Maisey will not be the only animal in Dudra’s classroom, thanks to a generous donation from Dudra’s grandmother, who helped make another adoption possible.
“We actually just adopted a giant panda,” Dudra explained. “We are funding one that’s over in Asia from the National Wildlife Foundation. Since the class is so passionate about animals, we were able to look at all the animals they had available. They got to vote on which animal they would like to support.”
The process was even a lesson for fourth-grade students, as students voted for which animal they wanted to adopt.
“So the vote we tried to tie into our social studies lessons with my co-teacher, Mrs. Ponsart,” Dudra said. “We set up voting stages. We did a nomination of what they would like, and then we narrowed it down to two. They were very excited. It got kind of heated between the panda bear and the orangutan, but the panda bear came out on top.”
According to Dudra, the panda adoption will include other important lessons for students.
“This will make it more worldwide, and how it connects to saving the planet and really helping animals survive in their habitats,” Dudra explained. “A big fourth-grade standard is landforms and bodies of water and the different habitats that are amazing and natural around this planet. So, I wanted to be able to connect it not only locally to Ohio, but now we’re going to connect it further away in different countries.”