Julie Malone’s Honors Biology class at Westerly High School spent their last day of class, scalpel in hand, learning from the anatomy of a frog. The class spent the entire semester learning and preparing for the last week of animal dissections.  Malone, who has been teaching the class for seven years, says that she enjoys the comparative anatomy of the frog to other mammals.

Marissa Lynch and Michael Gabrielle, juniors in the class, shared the same insights.  “The frog heart is similar to the human heart,” Marissa mentioned.  This kind of exercise prepares the students for the high school’s anatomy class, if they choose to continue in that direction.  Although some of the students were weary about cutting apart the dead frog, many of them seemed to be enjoying the hands-on learning experience.  Some wore gloves, others even wore masks, but there were a few brave souls who attempted the dissection with neither. 

The entire last week of the semester has been devoted to dissections.  The earthworm, dissected earlier in the week does not give the same comparisons as the frog, but is equally educational.  Malone enjoys assigning hands-on activities because she believes the students learn more if they can actually see what they have been learning about.