Now that you have taught your first inquiry science lesson, take a moment to reflect on the experience.
What were your lesson goals, both in terms of content and process skills? What strategy did you use to help students reveal and reflect on their own science ideas? What patterns did you observe in students' science ideas, writings, or drawings? Were any ideas particularly difficult or easy for students? Why was this? In what areas did students' science understandings grow? If you were going to teach a follow-up lesson to this one, what would it be and why? What question do you still have about teaching science?
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I just want to let you know that Norm and I have not had a chance to teach our science lesson yet. However, it is posted on Wikispace.
The primary content goal of our lesson was for the students to understand two of the factors that determine an object’s buoyancy: weight and shape. The lesson also focuses on several different process skills: communication, observation, classification, inference, and prediction. We helped students connect with the lesson plan by relating the scientific concept of buoyancy to a real-life experience such as: swimming, floating, and objects that float or sink. Then, we utilized an activity to increase student interest in the lesson. Keeping the students involved in the activity through questioning and the prediction process enabled the students to reveal and explore their science ideas. At this point, some of the students were able to hypothesize that weight played a role in an object’s ability to float. Therefore, those students believed that all metal items (heavier) would sink and all wood items (lighter) would float. After testing their items, almost all students were able to communicate that weight played an important role in which objects sink and float. One group that tested bottle caps noticed that it depended on which way the bottle cap was placed into the water, as to whether it would sink or float. After further discussion, this group was able to communicate to the class that shape played an important role as well. Similarly, other groups noticed that the plastic items would float, but only if they were placed in the water gently. Students were able to communicate that weight plays an important role in the buoyancy of an object and some students were able to understand that shape also plays an important role in buoyancy. Students that had initial predictions about all wood objects float and all metal objects sink were able to understand that the weight of the object was important. We did not notice any particularly difficult parts for students because they had the opportunity to make predictions and through our initial demonstration and their own exploration they were able to understand a few of the factors that determine an object’s buoyancy (weight and shape). Student’s understandings grew through the inquiry process. They were able to create a prediction and test their predictions and through this process create their own understandings. The whole class then came together to determine what buoyancy is and two of the important components—weight and shape. Near the end of the lesson the class was able to determine that these components were not the only factors affecting an object’s buoyancy, therefore I would follow this lesson with another lesson on some other factors that affect buoyancy, possibly surface tension, possibly surface tension. This lesson would be an ideal follow-up to the lesson we just did, because the subject of buoyancy has just been introduced and is still fresh in the students’ minds. Our main question about teaching science is: other than trying to align the science curriculum with the NSES standards, how do we know which science concepts we should be teaching a specific grade level and when we should be teaching them?
Dustin G. AND Erin B.
Our lesson goals in terms of content was for the students to understand how electrons flow in a current and the differences between open and closed circuits. The lesson goals in terms of process skills included designing, building, and testing a simple electric circuit,predicting if certain circuits would work or not, and finally testing various ways of making a circuit. Students were able to reveal and reflect on their own science ideas by circling pictures of different circuits they thought would work-then testing each one to see if they were right or not. The students were also asked to find two alternate ways of making a circuit and sketch their results. Most of the students' drawings looked similar to one another, but there were a few differences in the way each student had their battery and light bulb positioned. The fact that the bulb had to be touched on both the side and the bottom in order for it to light up was, at first, a difficult concept for the students to grasp, but after they experimented with a few different types of circuits-they began to catch on. The students' science understandings grew in the inquiry process. By making predictions-then going through the testing process, students learned about circuits and electricity through experiments and developed their own understanding of how it works. If I were to teach a follow-up lesson to this one, I would probably teach the students about short & long circuits, how to make a safe circuit, and what circuits are used for. One question that I still have about teaching science is,how,when you are teaching an inquiry based lesson, do you make sure that each student is doing their own work and developing an understanding of the content?
Our lesson goal was to have the students be able to identify circuits and that energy flows through a circuit. The students also had to understand that energy/electricity flows from the negative pole to the positive pole of a battery. The process the students had to learn was how to design, build, and test a circuit. The students were given one battery, one wire, and one bulb, they had to light the bulb with what they were provided. The students were able to test many different circuits provided to them on a worksheet. This let the students see that there was more than one way to create a circuit and they were able to view this through trial and error.
The students were than asked to make two more complete circuits that were different from the ones already made. This gave the students time to explore different ideas and fully understand the lesson and how circuits really worked. Many of the students came up with the same ideas, some just switched their drawings upside down or to another side, although there were a few very creative ideas. The students were able to use the inquiry process by just being given the three objects and asked to make the bulb light without much direction. They were also asked to predict the outcomes of the circuit. The gave the students a change to discover on thier own how a circuit is composed. This lead the students to have a better understanding of the lesson. If I were to teach a follow-up lesson I would make sure I had better knowledge of what they students had already learned and what they were interested in learning. I too like Ashley would teach the children about short-circuits, and make sure the children understood what a circuit was used for.
The one question I still have about teaching a science lesson is how do you make sure the students really understand the lesson just taught, or how to make sure that certain students just aren't feeding off of the other members of thier group? After seeing the students take the test, a few couldn't make a circuit, something they learned about in the beginning of the unit.
The Content goal of Tara and my lesson plan was for the students to understand mangnets. They needed to understand that each mangnet had a posotive and a negative pole, that oposite poles attracts, and that mangnets are atrratcted to iron. Our lesson also had several process goals such as communication becuase they were in groups, prediction to see when objects the magnets would be attracted to, testing their theries about what the magnets were attracted to, and observation. We allowed the students first to predict what their magnets were going to stick to. We then gave them a magnet so they could test their theories to see if they were right. AFter they tested their theories we had a dicussion about what they found out. After our discussion, we gave the class 5 minutes to explore the classroom with their magnets. This second exploration period seemed to be helpful in fully developing their ideas. It seemed as though the students already had some sort of background knowlege on magnets, so, they all knew that magnets stuck to metal but only a few knew that it was actually iron that magnets are attracted to. The only idea that seemed to get just a little confusing was that opposite poles attract, therefore like poles repelled. By the end of the lesson the students understood that magnets were attracted to iron, not just metal. We tested this by giving them a rock that had iron in it and when the magnet stuck to it we asked "what does this mean then?" and the students were able to answer "I has iron in it." :) They also were able to tell us confidently that like poles repelled. If we were to do a follow up lesson we would go over what we had done in out previous lesson then start teaching about the magnetic field and how it works.
I believe we discussed in one of our classes that you can teach almost anything at any grade level, it's just a matter of how in depth you go into it, so that's our question; How do you know how in depth into a subject you should go for it to maintain age/grade appropriate.
Sarah and I taught a lesson on how to use a hand lens. We wanted the students to learn how to use a hand lens, how to record observations, and a basic understanding of how a lens works. The Science as inquiry goal was to have abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry. The content standard was Physical Science: Properties of Objects and Materials. We had the students draw what they remember the tails side of a dime looks like in the first circle. After they had completed that we passed out dimes for them to draw the tails side again in the middle circle. After most had completed that task I introduced the hand lens. I described how to use the lens, close one eye or cover it with your hand and make sure not to touch the dime to the lens surface as not to scratch the lens. After passing the lenses out and the students able to experiment with at their desks they were supposed to draw the tails side of the dime again with the lens. After they were done with their drawings they had some questions to answer to help further understand how the hand lens helped them see more details then with their naked eye. The students that were most engaged with the hand lens drew more detailed pictures in the third circle then in the second circle. Students that struggle in reading, I noticed, thought that the second drawing was the most detailed and did not fully understand the benefits of the hand lens with the lesson. Also there is one student who wears glasses and appears to have a bad eye who struggled with the hand lens and seeing better with it. Some students struggled with the hand lens period or focusing on using the hand lens on the dime to draw what they saw in the circle. The students that receive extra help in reading, math , or just one of these topics had a hard time with why the hand lens worked and focusing to draw what they saw. Most of the students understood at the end of the lesson how important it is to make observations and how the hand lens helped them to see a more detailed picture. A follow-up lesson might be discussing in more detail what professionals use a hand lens and how it benefits them in their work. I would have the students observe more items with a hand lens to see more details in items they look at everyday. I still have a hard time thinking that all students understood the hand lens. I was wondering though when you have a student that has a hard time staying on task with anything, and I noticed she was not on task with the hand lens and wanted to just look at other items. How would you make sure that that student really understood the purpose of the lesson and the hand lens?
The primary goal of our lesson was for students to learn about the ways diseases are spread using an inquiry based model. From what I have observed, science lessons in our classroom consist of students reading a book and writing down definitions of words. When I ask comprehension questions, half the time, the students have no idea what they just read. They get easily bored. Our lesson gave students a chance to discover information on their own, in a manner that was interesting and fun. The students have been reading a book about germs in the last few weeks, so we did a lesson using PDA's with virus software to help them discover information about the spread of disease, mainly how to discover the source of diseases. In order to help students reflect on the ideas they came up with, we asked guiding questions and let them repeat their experiments over and over, testing out new hypotheses.
One idea the students struggled with was incubation time. I repeatedly heard that "She got me sick because I got sick right after I met her." We asked, "in real life do you get sick right after you meet a sick person or does it take time?" We got the response that it takes time, but the students still didn't grasp the idea that it worked the same way with the game. They finally seemed to grasp the concept when we figured out the real culprit of the sickness. They seemed to understand that diseases can take hours, days, or even weeks from when you contracted it until you show symptoms.
I think the main way the students benefitted from this lesson was being able to design their own experiments and developing their own understandings instead of the book's understanding. It seems the students rarely have the chance to do experiments, and the ones they do get a chance to perform come from the book. To follow up with this lesson I would maybe do another inquiry based lesson and focus on a single disease that is common today. The CDC has a good lesson on hantavirus involving cards that the students organize to solve a mystery.
One question I have about teaching science is should all science lessons be inquiry based, or is it ok to still use textbooks and guided experiments to teach some concepts? Can you mix all three to create an effective lesson?
This is Norm and Lindsey N. As requested by our cooperating teacher, we taught a measurement lesson out of the FOSS book and kit for our science inquiry lesson. The FOSS book is pretty much a step-by-step manual for teaching and comes with any and all materials in the kit. For our lesson we taught an introduction to the meter, the universal standard unit of measure (particularly in science). We first asked the class (third graders) how they would go about measuring the height of the classroom door, the length of the classroom, and the height of Mr. Garrett. Students mostly answered “with rulers” or “with measuring tape.” We then introduced the meter and centimeter and discussed certain objects that about a meter and centimeter long. We then talked about when it would be appropriate to measure using centimeters and meters.
The goals of our lesson were to familiarize students with measurement using a standard unit, specifically the meter and centimeter. We also wanted them to get hands-on experience with measurement by measuring their desks. The strategies we used were imbedded in the activity. For the activity, we had half the class measure their desks using short straws and the other half measure their desks using longer straws. The results were recorded on the board so the class could see the discrepancies. Some thought that their desks were different sizes, but others suspected that the straws were different lengths. Therefore, Norm and I talked about the importance of having a standard unit of measure in order to get the same results for measuring something of the same size.
As far as observing student ideas, we noticed that most students quickly recognized the need for a standard unit of measure. The students were also able to recognize what items would be appropriate measuring in centimeters and what would be appropriate measuring in meters. Most students seemed to understand these concepts, but the difficulty came for them (and us) while they worked in groups. Our class isn’t used to working in groups in their class, so they don’t have any experience or practice sharing materials and dividing work. This became a challenge to us because we had to constantly “break up” squabbles over others not taking turns or sharing straws and meter tapes.
As we’ve said above, students began to understand the reason for using a standard unit of measurement. Although students really didn’t see this as “science,” they needed to learn this basic math/science skill in order to complete future science activities. If we were to teach a follow-up lesson, we would teach the students estimation. We would have them estimate objects (height, length, distance) in meters and centimeters and then have them check their results. This would advance their understanding of the measurement concept by requiring critical thinking and providing more hands-on experience with the meter tape. The question we still have about teaching science is how does a teacher effectively teach a lesson that requires group work with limited materials?
Emily and I taught a science lesson that we adapted from one in "Science and Children." Our goal was for these students, who have not had any science all year, to be reintroduced to the idea of using tools in science (in this case the hand lens) to assist in the scientific process. We wanted the students to realize that being a good scientist requires that one be very observant of even the smallest details of things we think we know. In this case, we had them exam the tails side of a dime. We had the students first draw a dime as they could remember it, without looking at one. This engaged caused them to reflect on how well they know a dime. I think it was important to have them draw the dime, rather than just explain it because it made them realize that they were missing some things. At this stage, I noticed that most of the class had no idea what the dime looked like. Some wrote "dime" and some drew a head even though it was the tails side. One or two drew a tree. Once they were able to actually look at the dime, and later with a hand lens, the students became very involved in looking at the details and trying to draw them. Some students needed to be encouraged to draw EVERYTHING they saw, even if there was a scratch on the dime. The students' understanding of science seemed to develop during this lesson. At the end, we had them look from a distance at something small, such as a thumb tack, and draw it, then, again up close with the hand lens. This brought the process into a more realistic situation where they realize they can observe things all around them, everyday. A follow up lesson to this one would inlcude students making discoveries and obervations of an object related more to science. For example, maybe we would go outside and each collect a few natural specimens to exam with our hand lens in the classroom. They could then come up with questions about some of the details they discoverd such as, "Why do leaves have little veins in them?" or "Where do all the colors come from in rocks?" The question I still have about teaching science is how to use the 5E's when teaching a topic that is not tangible, such as cell structure.
Our lesson worked from one of the probes we talked about in class. Our primary content goal was for students to begin to understand that the mass of a closed system should not change. The main process goals we were focusing on were observation, prediction, communication, and actually testing a testable question. We used a science notebook as well as a hands on activity to help students reveal and reflect on their own science ideas. The science notebook was incredibly helpful because it guided the ‘journey’ toward the students discovery. We developed the question as a class and then each student could independently make a prediction and write it down. Then we had the students each build a jar and weigh it. They recorded the weight and made observations in their notebook.
Most students thought the weight of the jar would increase. After the beans had grown we had the students re-weigh the jars and make new observations. Before we talked about what happened and why they thought the weight didn’t change, the students were baffled. They thought that their jars were ‘broken’ or that they didn’t do something correctly. Furthermore we noticed that the students had a REALLY hard time making observations. This is a skill that they hadn’t practiced at all which was very apparent in their notebooks.
After whole class discussion, the students understood what a closed system is and why the mass in such a situation would not change. If we were to teach a follow up lesson we would teach observation skills. With practice these students would be able to learn how to make effective observations, which is a necessary skill for our students to gain.
We used glass jars which we thought would be completely fine. We didn’t have any problems, but plastic would have been much more safe. We were afraid that one of the students was going to break the glass.
Natalie AND Erin McG.
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