disection!!

[changingsoon]

Hi
Does anyone know the rules on this one? Dd just started 2nd school but is really worried about having to do this in science, she adores any creature and just says she cant pos do it.

She won't have to do it. There aren't a vast number done anyway, and teacher will certainly have prepared something else for any conscientious objectors. She won't be alone either. Don't fret.

They are great though .

oh i do hope you are right. thanks

I am right. I'm a biology teacher

fab.

I quite enjoyed dissections, I have to admit...I did A level biology and loved having the roll up dissection kit and lab coat (frustrated doctor in me !). We did a rat and a dogfish but I found it very hard to have to kill a locust for an experiment
Btw TheFallenMadonna - what's the deal with bunsen burners today ? will ds (yr 7) have to light one ? he will be quite scared I know - I used to dread them.

Oh yes.

I love the frisson of excitment that you get when you tell the year 7s that they are going to light a bunsen burner .

Don't you fret either. He'll be talked through it very carefully. A bit of trepidation is quite a good thing really.

!

BTW changing soon, whole animal dissection very rare now. I tend to do lungs (I do them - we don't get lungs for the whole class!), hearts, kidneys, chicken wings and pigs trotters. And fish with A level classes.

I don't know if your dd would feel differently about just organs, rather than whole animals.

Lighting the bunsen burner was the highlight of science for my dd in year 7! Not sure why - she's been lighting candles and campfires and barbecues and so on for ages! But the bunsen burner was special. Oh and the lab coat and the safety goggles and the test tubes and the bottles of stuff and retort stands and the what do you call those things? eureka flasks?...she was fizzing with excitement!

Oooh this is interesting - animal-loving dd is Y8 and had heard rumour that they have to dissect a rat in Y8 and she distinctly remembers the decesased rat on school open evening - but biology teacher hasn't mentioned it. Phew.

She's always had pet hamsters and rats are just too close relatives really

I remember my dogfish and rat getting more and more manky as the weeks went on - we took the ta's lower jaw off,I think

rat's jaw

We only did an eye ball. Mine went flying actoss the room

We aslo saw pigs lungs

I don't think I learned much from either experience, except the pigs lungs should have been refirigerated to stop them stinking, and eyeballs are slippy.

Now I would refuse point blank to do anything.

Eurghh the cows eye ball

Mine had 'gone off' a bit and was damned hard to slice open. It is one of my most vivid memories of secondary education

!!!!

I have fond memories of Mr Ash demonstrating how the lungs worked by hooking them up to an 02 bottle and making them inflate and deflate and then getting a bit to excited by it all and letting it explode all over the classroom

I think this will be one area that DD will opt out of. Me I loved it. When I was doing my nurse training I loved being in theatre especially when they did any abdo surgery as most of the surgeons would point out the various bits of anatomy they were dealing with!

No-one is ever made to do one, or even be in the room when one is being done.

In general we do (possibly) a fish in the lower school. Students do a kidney in year 10, teachers demo the lungs in year 11 and students do a heart in year 11. All organs have to be food grade, and we get them from Tescos!

and thefallenmadona is right, and I'm a biology teacher too!

rats are seldom is ever done, because of the cost, and limits of teaching time.

I have demoed one to the sixth form (ie year 12 and 13)

Rats were done by students when I was in school as a student myself, but only the sixthform

I wouldn't do it and my biology teacher could barely hide her disdain

Mind you I always made a fuss about the stinky labs anyway so she had good reason to hate me.

Ds (5) has just started dissection.

The other day I was cleaning his little loo by his room, and on the side of the sinkw as a glass jar with something suspended in it in water...I lobbed it down the toilet and later he was really upset - 'Mummy where is it?'
'what, ds?'
'My slug's CORE'

waaahhhhh

He wanted to keep it for ever. Can I ask you science girls what I need to buy - pickling vinegar or something?

Sod hE.