What do zebrafish and humans have in common?

The week of October 30, Tracy Nelson from the University of Pennsylvania brought in a study unit called BioEYES, an experiment on tropical Zebrafish, complete with aquaria, workbooks, microscopes and other lab materials to Nita Hopkins’ second grade class.

Students observed the fish, drawing pictures and noting differences between males and females. Keeping a journal, they worked through the week learning to use some science tools – pipettes, petri dishes, microscopes - and comparing the life cycle of a zebrafish to the human life cycle. On day 2, they drew pictures of their fish embryos – they looked like eyeballs! On day 4, they learned about lungs and gills

Later, out on the playground, some second graders reported on this study unit. “The mom zebrafish had a big, big belly on the first day,” said Anthony N., “and two days later some eggs came out. Two days after that,” he added excitedly, cupping his hand under his chin, “the fries had a big thing on their necks.”  Sydney C. and Darcy F. said it was something called chorion, which none of us could spell, but sometimes is also called yolk, which “feeds the fry.”

From the workbook, we learn that the plural of fry is not ‘fries’ but ‘fry,’ as in “How many fry do you have?”