Gross and Disgusting are not "Science Words"

Today's science lesson centered around mixing solids and liquids. I think this was the most challenging to date because there were so many materials we needed to control, and there were many steps to complete the experiment. My partner, Megan, and I both agreed that our key to success today was going to be with classroom management and making sure the students didn't talk too much or move ahead on their own. To accomplish this, we dedicated precious minutes at the beginning of the hour to making sure that everyone understood the rules and expectations of the day. We stressed the importance of being good listeners and that everyone needed to stay focused and only talk when we asked them to talk with their partners. Much to our delight, this actually worked (for the most part!).

We were very explicit in our instruction today and broke the lesson down into very small, consumable parts. We walked the entire class together through each activity in the lesson, asking students to take turns doing the pouring or the mixing, etc. This process worked very well with these students. They really like to all be involved in the hands-on activities, so taking turns is a good, democratic way to make sure everyone gets a turn and stays happy.

Our observation tasks this week were: content vocabulary, flow of the class, and misconceptions identified.

We were actually happy to have vocabulary as one of the observations today, because it forced us to think about it more concretely and develop a method for ensuring that our students were being introduced to the new vocabulary words in a way that is meaningful and useful to them. I think we've done a good job in the past taking time to explain new words and review their meaning and importance throughout the lessons, but we took it a step further this week by creating a vocabulary hand out. We highlighted a few of the new words that we've been using in this unit (and will continue to introduce over the next couple of weeks), and we defined them in simple, easy to remember definitions. Each student received a copy of the handout, and we explained that they could keep these vocabulary sheets in their science folders and refer to them if they had any questions or didn't understand something. In addition, we created a "vocabulary word of the day" handout that provided more context and an example. Our word of the day was "solution", so we provided the definition and two examples of solutions. One example was mixing lemonade crystals with water to create lemonade, a "real world" example that most of the kids could relate to. Our second example incorporated the "effervescent tablet" experiment from our first lesson, which provided nice synergy across lessons. The students all remembered that experiment enthusiastically, so I was glad we were able to provide some more context around what we did and what became of that tablet after it "disappeared" into the water. Megan and I were delighted to hear one student at the end of the class sharing, without prompting from either of us, his ranking of which of the mixtures was the best solution in today's lesson. It was so wonderful to see that they had actually listened and that they had actually learned something from our lesson! I also think having some of my attention on vocabulary helped me to be a better teacher. As I was walking around the room during activities, some of the students would say things like "it's gross" or "it's disgusting" when I asked them to make an observation about the mixture. I was able to talk to them about how "gross" isn't really a good "science word" and asked them to think about how they could explain that in a more scientific way. It was fun to watch their wheels turns as they thought of more descriptive ways to convey their observations.

For flow of the class, Megan and I kept a very tight reign on the timing and the pacing of each step. We used a classroom management technique of "thumbs up and mouths closed" when each group completed each step. This is a strategy that the classroom teacher uses and shared with us in an early lesson. The students respond well to it, and it helps them to focus on what the teacher is saying. Our class is full of very enthusiastic talkers, so it doesn't take much to get them off track, and the room gets pretty loud pretty quick! Megan and I are very lucky to work really well together, and we worked together to keep things under control.

Identifying misconceptions was a little tricky. It's difficult to imagine what the students will think or question, but we did provide a list of possible misconceptions in our lesson plan, and we printed out a copy of that, as well as all of our handout/materials to leave with Dr. Gilmore who was observing us today. Provind the material ahead of time was a great way for Dr. Gilmore to get an understanding of what we were trying to accomplish and provided her with insight into our thinking and our planning. As were progressed through the lesson, we would ask students to record their observations on their record sheets, and by walking around the room during this time, we were able to directly address their misconceptions as they occured. In addition, in the recap at the end of the lesson, we asked students to share their observations with the class and could address misconceptions with the whole class as they came up. This worked really well today and in the past for us.

As we get more comfortable with the class and with the unit, I feel like it's coming together more and more each week. We're getting better about remembering to ask the "science question of the day", beginning our intros with a recap of what we did in the previous lesson to get their minds focused back on science, pacing the class and the activities so the students have ample time to enjoy the experiment while staying on schedule, and we're getting really great at recapping the lessons so that the students understand the purpose of why we did the particular activity and what it means from a science standpoint. This experience has been invaluable, and I really am learning so much from it.

It's been really great so far, and it just keeps getting better and better. Especially after we were done today and we had accomplished everything we set out to accomplish. It was a challenging week, and we had out doubts, but with a lot of planning and communication, we were able to pull it off! Yay us!