Hey! There's crystals in my soil!

My first science lesson went better than even I had expected. I really had no clue going into the lesson about how enthusiastic the students would actually be when observing soil. However, I quickly found the answer to my question as soon as the lesson's experiment began. One of the first things I heard from the students was a yell that carried through the whole room when a student excitedly cried "Whoa! There's crystals in here"! Obviously there were no crystals in the dirt, but the shouts of glee from many of the students was proof that they were actively interested in what they were observing. I also found that the students were exceedingly willing to offer up their thoughts and answers to any of the questions posed by my co-teacher and myself. Although sometimes this can be a bad thing, such as students raising their hands in participation but not thinking of any answers or about the content at hand, the students I was teaching all offered answers that pertained to the content of the lesson.

One thing that I found that was difficult to get through the student's heads was the diffrent types of observations. Before the experiment, my co-teacher and I had demonstrated all the diffrent types of observation (all 5 senses) and how they would be used in the classroom. However, when it came time for the experiment the students may have used most of the appropriate senses to observe, but did not record their observations unless it involved sight. Even when prompted to think about the diffrent things they could write down, or even told that they should write a certain observation down, it seemed that the observations using the sense of sight would be the only ones that the students recorded. A great example of this is when one student explained to me that his dirt was wet to the touch. I told him that was a great observation and that he should record that on his data sheet. However, because it did not pertain to the sense of sight he never recorded his observation. This happened many times with many diffrent students. I think adding a permenant visual cue may aid the students in expanding the use of their senses. This visual cue would probably be a large piece of chart paper with all the diffrent types of observations one can make with their senses. Maybe at certain times I will interject during the experiment to the whole class and ask them if they are using all their senses and recording them, since it does not seems to work well at the individual level.

One thing that I will have to do to improve my end of the lesson is to leave a little more time for practicing the lesson plan with my co-teacher. Although the lesson went well, it would have gone even smoother if the two of us knew exactly who would present what and how much. We both did an equal amount of discussion with thel class, but on certain topics one or the other would have to interject during a discussion which could have causes a little confusion in the students. Luckily the students did not seem to be to thrown of by having two teachers presenting.

Can't wait for the next lesson, I think it will go even better this time!