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Good Choices Build a Pearl
Ms. A. Dailey

Excitement was in the air! During science class, the students had learned how a pearl is formed slowly in a mollusk. Now, the students braced themselves as each opened their very own oyster and pulled out the hidden pearl. All the pearls were different, either by size, shape, or color, just like no two people are the same.

The students compared the idea of the beautiful pearl in the mollusk with a person's character. They voiced opinions that it is what is inside of a person that matters and not how they look. Each person is special due to the differences in his/her personality. When students make good choices in their lives, then they are working on making a beautiful pearl or a good character.

Students learned a valuable life lesson while studying science, math, practicing their reading skills and applying computer technology to present information to others. Several books were read about wonderful characters that were not beautiful on the outside, but were special by their actions. Students read the learn how pearls are formed and harvested from the oceansfor science lessons. By tallying the class pearl colors and creating a Venn diagram to compare and contrast types of pearls used in jewelry, the class practiced math skills. The students worked in cooperative groups to present graphs of their pearl colors in various formats of pie charts, line graphs, and bar graphs.

Who can say which lesson was the most important that the students learned from a small mollusk?