I have used ...

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I have used ...
By JohnV

owl pellets and ancillary materials (such as posters) from Mountain Home Biological ( http://www.pelletlab.com/ ).

My fifth graders have had mixed success in reconstructing skeletons.
Those students who are very diligent will do an excellent job with them. Others will identify bones incorrectly and misunderstand how things go together. I also usually allow students to trade bones in order to complete their skeletons if their pellet doesn't have a complete set.
The biggest problem I have found is that students will overlook some of the smallest bones during

the dissection. Bones from the feet are very small and get lost in the hair. Vertebrae get overlooked because hair gets adhered to them and students think they look like broken pieces of larger bones. Ribs can sometimes look like pieces of grass.

I usually do this after teaching about the skeletal system in human beings and use the owl pellet dissection to compare and contrast. The dissection can also be used with lessons on food chains and webs.

I have begun to move away from owl pellets because some of my fifth graders have said that teachers in earlier grades are doing them.

John