Ms. Julie Cannova, Ms. Kayley Zicarelli use special ‘mimetic instruction’ techniques to educate first-grade students about butterflies
St. Francis Xavier (SFX) Catholic School first-graders received a special “mimetic” lesson about butterflies from first-grade teacher Ms. Julie Cannova and librarian and technology specialist Ms. Kayley Zicarelli.
Mimetic instruction leads students to understand ideas by contemplating models or types. These ideas don’t have to be things in nature, like butterflies. They can also be found in literature, history, or other subjects.
Students of mimetic instruction use these models to learn inductively, meaning they come to understand the idea through particular experiences with it. This follows from the understanding of knowledge held by philosophers like Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, who both suggested that knowledge begins in the senses.
The SFX 1st-graders were first asked to contemplate the question, “What makes a butterfly and butterfly?” on their own.
They then examined several images of butterflies and moths contrasted with images of other animals with similar characteristics, including other insects like ladybugs, crickets, and bees and other winged animals like birds and bats.
After students learned about butterflies in this way, Ms. Cannova read them a verse from St.Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, which related to a book Ms. Zicarelli read them immediately after, titled “A Butterfly is Patient” by Dianna Aston.
Finally, Ms. Cannova and Ms. Zicarelli assigned each student a species of butterfly. The students received images of the butterfly and were then tasked with filling in a coloring sheet with the appropriate colors.
St. Francis Xavier Catholic School is an accredited classical Catholic PreK-8 school in Birmingham’s Crestline neighborhood that uses the time-tested Catholic Intellectual Tradition to form students in virtue through the pursuit of academic excellence and service toward God and neighbor.
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