Soil: Lesson 2

Lesson Intro: My co-teacher and I had noticed that in our previous lesson the students seemed to only make observations using their sense of sight. To fix this problem so that the students would think to include all their senses when making observations (except taste of course), we devised a two step intro that would both demonstrate examples of observations using diffrent senses and then have the students attempt to use their diffrent senses to make observations. First, my co-teacher introduced a made up story that would apply the use of observations to a situation that could apply to the student's lives. The story involved my co-teacher finding an object in her garden that she was unfamiliar with. To find out what the object was, she had to use her senses to gather observations. After giving examples of the observations she made, my co-teacher showed the item which was an awkward looking butternut squash. Now that the students had a concrete example to follow, I began to ask them about observations that pertained to the substances we would be studying for the experiment. These observations were written down on charts. Needless to say, by then end of the experiment the students were making all kinds of observations using all their senses. Mission accomplished!

Framework Connections: I actually found that this experiment easily fit into the frameworks. Mainly they just asked for students to be able to do diffrent kinds of observations and make predictions (did this too, but it was assessed at the end of the lesson). They also wanted the studnets to be able to use equipment like hand lenses and stuff, which was a main part of observing the materials with the sense of sight.

Material Management: During the first lesson my co-teacher and I designated certain studnets to be material collectors in hopes of getting some of the studnets a bit more active. However, the other students proved to be way to enthusiastic about the lesson, so it was difficult for the collectors to do their jobs with the interference of the other students. This time around, my co-teacher and I set out all the materials on their grouped desks. I was initailly afraid that they would be too excited about the things on their desks and would begin tampering with the materials. However, with just a little instruction this way proved much more effective than the last. The materials were not touched until it was time to do so, and there was no chaos caused by students trying to manage their materials. Hooray!