Small Fry to Go - Week #4; A Teacher's Perspective!

On Monday, January 10th, my class of twenty-six 1st grade students marched their way down to meet our new visitors. The previous weekend, approximately 1,200 rainbow trout eggs arrived on the Temecula Preparatory School campus to begin their lives. My students had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Small Fry to Go program, but they were not prepared for the way it would change their view of learning.

As an educator, Small Fry to Go is a dream come true. I met Tom Schmeltzer, the director of the Small Fry to Go program a few months ago over dinner and I was ecstatic about this opportunity for Temecula Preparatory School. As he began to tell me about the program I had countless questions, not only about the procedures and lesson plans, but about the fish themselves. I knew that if I found this program to be enthralling to me, the students were in for a treat.

Students in our educational systems today are not as interested in what a textbook has to say in comparison to hands-on, real life science. While many teachers have undertaken the task of raising butterflies, Tom opened my eyes to see the benefit of the Small Fry to Go program. This program not only ties in the life cycle of a rainbow trout, it also incorporates math, writing, and additional subjects into the lesson plans. While all of this already sounds almost too good to be true, the paramount force behind this program is this: students are asking questions and thinking critically.

Day in and day out, as my students are watching their fish grow and change, their minds are flooded with observations and questions.  For example, this afternoon my students observed that the fish had grown fins, their food sacks that they had lived off of for the first few weeks were gone and they were now gobbling up the fish food. Today they asked me why some of the fish are “playing dead.” They noticed that some of the fish were lying at the bottom of the trough, perfectly still. But, when another fish bumped into them, they swam away, thus showing they were clearly alive. Naturally, my students wanted to know why the fish “play dead.” They discussed it together and came to the conclusion that it is probably a form of protection. We talked about how in the wild the fish would have to hide from predators, and the 1st graders knew that a predator probably wouldn’t prefer to have a dead trout as a tasty snack. The trout were more clever than expected. The students concluded that the trout were probably afraid when they heard and saw the first graders peering into their habitat, and therefore they were “playing dead.” That led into the question of whether or not fish sleep, leading us back to the classroom to conduct some research on my iPad.

This in only one sample of the many conversations that are taking place in my classroom and others on campus, and it reveals something of magnificent magnitude. Children are beginning once again to find excitement and value in asking questions and thinking for themselves. They are not confined to a textbook and teacher – generated questions. I believe that this excitement for learning is only a foretaste of the future of these TPS students. I look forward to watching how 1200 tiny rainbow trout can change the future of learning for this group of learners.

Courtney Montoya

First Grade Faculty Member

Temecula Preparatory School

We would like to thank our sponsors – Riverside County Board of Supervisors, LEGO Children’s Fund, and Littlefield Physical Therapy