Things are Really Gettin' Good Now!

This week, my teaching partner, Megan and I worked with the students on the next lesson in our Changes unit. Because this lesson had many steps, Megan and I were challenged to manage the classroom effectively. In our past lessons, there's been more independent discovery time, and students could pace themselves, but with this lesson, we wanted the entire class to progress from step to step together. It was tough, but our classroom teacher taught us one of her techniques which is to ask the students to give a thumbs up once they completed the task. This helped up keep the kids focused and was an easy identifier of the students that required assistance and/or more time.

Our friend who has shown a strong interest in pickles didn't let us down. While he was observing the properties of the sea salt, he noted that it "smelled like pickles". I had to laugh when he said that!

Megan and I also focused our attention this week on posing a "science question of the day", based on feedback we received in prior observations. Our question was "what is a mixture", and at the start of the lesson, the students were able to tell us that a mixture is something that is made of more than one thing, but following the lesson, having had a chance to create and separate their own mixtures, they showed a deeper understanding and were able to articulate that in this case, even when we took two substances and mixed them together, each substance maintained its properties, and each substance was clearly visible throughout the experiment. We even had one student ask what would happen if we added water to the substance, which is what we're going to do with the class next week, so it was a good preview, and it was so impressive that she was thinking about it.

Another element Megan and I worked on was introducing process skills. We explained that when we conduct science experiments, we use process skills and that this week, we were going to practice "classifying." When I asked if any students thought they knew what it was, one student said that it was like a secret. Like when someone has classified information. Although not the definition we were looking for, it was good that they thought about it and used their prior knowledge to form an answer. We continued asking for ideas about classifying, and one student thought it was a way to "name something".
I was quite impressed with the simplistic yet accurate description. I continue to be surprised at how smart these kids are!! We explained to the students that we wanted them to practice their classification skills during this experiment by organizing the materials into groups and identifying their properties. They were able to understand this when Megan gave them a good example of how most of our closets are organized into shirts, pants, sweaters, etc. It helped them understand the concept with a real world example that I thought was very effective.

Once the experiment was complete, we returned to the front of the classroom for a wrap-up discussion, asking the students if we saw any mixtures during our lesson today and asked the students to list some of their thoughts and experiences with the mixture. We captured their thoughts on the flip chart paper and reviewed any questions they had. For instance, one group thought that they salt had changed colors during the mixing. We explained that what they were seeing was probably a shadow and removed the smaller cup from the larger cup to show them it was the same color. We also had a few groups that thought the rocks had changed into sand because when they were mixing the two substances together, the friction agains the rocks caused them to break down a bit. Megan did a great job asking them to think about were they still the same color? Were they still rocks? And the students understood. It was a great discussion!

I continue to be very proud of the students and can't wait each week to return to the classroom to work with them again.