Dissecting Worms


When the students arrived this morning we opened up the worm bin and harvested four worms. We place the worms in a shallow dish and added some rubbing alcohol. The students understood that the worms’ lives were being sacrificed so they could learn skills important for their future. They watched as the worms struggled for a bit and then died. Watching this process impressed upon the 8-10-year-old students the seriousness of their club activity. 

We placed the worms in our dissection pans, two worms to a pan. The students were excited to open the dissection kits provided by the Idaho INBRI Program. We looked through the new tools in the kit and decided to open one blade from each kit.

The students used the blades to make a shallow cut down the length of the worm. One student commented that she felt like a doctor. The student immediately started making guesses about the organs she saw in the worm. 

I gave her some sewing pins to hold back the worm’s skin and pulled up a worm anatomy chart on an iPad. All the students were able to identify the heart and the intestines. When the bell rang for school to start no-one wanted to leave. Before they left, we made a plan to dissect larger worms next week. 






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