Final Lesson!

Today was the best lesson we had yet!  Mrs. K did not think she was going to be teaching her lesson on science last Thursday like usual because the students had assessments that she needed to get done, so we had discussed last week that Ms. Hall and I would be teaching the next lesson in the kit (lesson 11).  However, she was able to get all of the assessments finished on Thursday, so she did the lesson 11 on Friday, but forgot to let us know.  We had prepared lesson 11 from the kit, but I had a strange feeling over the weekend that this might happen so I e-mailed her just to double check that that was still the plan, and it turns out she had already done the lesson that we had planned on teaching today (which she did not respond to until eleven o'clock this morning!).  It was a little hectic trying to figure out what we were going to do to fix the situation, but it turns out that lesson 12 was very similar to lesson 11, so we were able to get our act together on time to give a great lesson. There were also a few activities that we did not get to last week because we were pressed with time that we were able to do at the end of today's lesson, which worked out perfectly.  This was a great experience because we learned that you don't always know when plans are going to change, and such issues can sometimes be out of your reach especially when working around another teacher's busy schedule, so you need to be ready to improvise on short notice.

The students were very well behaved today, and we could tell they were upset that this was going to be our last science lesson together.  The activity we did involved pouring water into a sample of sand and into a sample of clay in order to see which one drained faster, and to determine where the missing water "disappeared" to. The students clearly understood everything we wanted them to observe through today's lesson, and we had a great discussion about the differences between the sand and clay that made one drain better than the other.  We discussed what types of repercussions this would have regarding the types of vegetation that can grow there, and about the sand and clay's ability to support life in general.  The students drew pictures of their observations on the worksheet that we handed out, and then we had a discussion about why they believed the sand absorbed more water than the clay did, and about why some of the clay particles passed through the coffee filter when no sand particles were able to do so.

We ended today's lesson by watching another BrainPop video (which the students love!), and then we read a story about earthworms and why they are nicknamed "nature's plow" while sitting at the rug, which the students really enjoyed and were able to sit still and attentive throughout.  After wrapping up the lesson, the students had "Bucket Fillers" that they wanted to give to Ms. Hall and I, which were compliments based on a kind act that they saw us do, which for the most part involved us teaching them about soil and answering their questions.  This made us feel really good about teaching them, and made us feel appreciated as well, but it made it even harder to leave and say goodbye than we had expected! It was sad leaving because the students were all upset to see us go, but it was a great way to end the semester, and I'm glad that we were able to have this great teaching experience.

Roots

This week's lesson went very well, but there was a ton of setting up to do and there was a lot of information to cover within a one hour period.  I felt that we were moving along at a good speed and there was not much time being wasted because the students were especially well behaved this week, but we were clenched for time, so I wonder if the lesson from the kit may be a bit too difficult for this grade level.  The lesson was about roots, and the students did not know too much about roots other than the very basics, so we had to teach a lot of material before we could move onto the activity.  The students were really interested to learn that the parts of a plant that we can see is only about half of the plant's true size because of the extensive root system that is hidden underground.  We used the ELMO to show images of two different types of trees that we were discussing in order to show the students how some extensive root systems can be in different parts of the world depending on their climate and surrounding environment, which they thought was really cool.  We showed them a picture of a mangrove tree, which has such an extensive root system that it catches all of the soil particles and debris from the flowing river like a net, forming new land over time as a result.  We also showed them a picture of a great banyan tree, which has branches that grow out of the trunk of the tree and into the ground in order to support the tremendous size of the tree and its enormous canopy.

After discussing the significance of root systems, and that they act as both anchors and as a means of bringing water and nutrients up to the plant, we began our activity.  This week's activity was planting cucumber seeds in test tubes with sand, clay, and humus (three tubes per pair of students, one of each sample) in order to see which soil component would support the most extensive root system.  This activity was pretty difficult for the students because there were a lot of tricky parts to it that required the use of fine motor skills, such as pouring the soil components into the small test tubes without spilling it all over their desks.  The test tubes were open on both ends, so the students had to put a cotton ball in the bottom of their tubes in order to keep the soil components from falling through the bottom (which was how the kit designed the activity), but once the students began slowly adding water to the samples, the cotton balls got wet and they began falling out.  Alyssa and I had to circulate through the classroom and help out almost every group for one reason or another, and I just feel that the activity may have been a bit over their heads.  Overall, the activity went pretty well even though there were some difficulties that popped up along the way, and the students surprisingly remained calm and quiet throughout the lesson.  Before launching into the activity, we showed the students another BrainPop video that discussed root systems, and the students can't get enough of it!  They love sitting at the rug and watching the videos, and they think Moby is hilarious.  We had planned to incorporate engineering and technology into our lesson, but we simply did not have time due to the length of the activity itself, so we will be sure to touch upon it in next week's lesson.

Planting Cucumbers

Yesterday was our fifth science lesson, and I think we are getting so much better every single week which is a real morale booster!  This week, we really put everything together that we had been struggling with over the course of the last four weeks, and the smoothness of today's lesson showed that we had done this before.  There was a lot of content information that we had to teach in our introduction, so I was a little worried that the students would loose focus, but they surprisingly stayed on task very well.  I think it was helpful that we split the content information up into three distinct parts, and there was just enough transition in between each part to allow the students to regain their focus and keep their attention on the lesson.  Even something as simple as switching who is speaking or asking a question can allow the students more time to focus before loosing them.  It definitely helped that we had a question posed at the end of each section, which allowed the students a little thinking time and just enough transition to keep their attention focused on soil.

We began a long-term project planting cucumbers in different soil samples to see which type of soil will produce the healthiest plants.  We discussed what a healthy plant looks like, and that plants need water and minerals (just like we need food and water) in order to survive, and that the quality and quantity of soil has a tremendous effect on how much "food" the plants can get.  We watched a BrainPopJr. video on soil at the rug (which the students thought was fun), and then we began handing out the materials and the different samples of soil to each group. Students were paired up with the person sitting next to them, and each pair had two soil samples- one with local soil, and the second with either sand, clay, or humus depending on which group we assigned them to.  This way, everyone will have at least one healthy plant (the local soil), and they will be able to use the knowledge that they have gained over the last four weeks to determine why the sand and clay are not going to produce the healthiest plants (which they made predictions about today in their science journals).

I thought we did a great job incorporating technology into this week's lesson.  We had the students sit at the reading rug to watch the BrainPop video on my laptop, and after the students had drawn their initial observations of the plants and had written a description of what the samples looked like, we used the document camera to show some exemplary student work (which the students got really excited about!).  I think that by using the doc cam, we were able to get the students to work harder on their observations because they wanted to show the class their hard work, and it was a good way to use a little friendly competition in order to get the students to focus on doing their best work. 

We focused today's assessment on content writing, and we had the students write their predictions in their science journals as to which sample of soil they believe will produce the healthiest plant.  Alyssa and I walked around the classroom while the students were writing in their science journals to make sure they were staying on task, and then after the students planted their seeds, we handed out two worksheets in which they had to write their initial observations of each sample after the first day.  I think that by having the students write about what they are learning allows them to think through what they really want to say, and it gives them something to refer back to in a few weeks when the plants are grown so that they can see how much they have learned.  I'm glad that today's lesson went so smoothly, and it definitely gave me a boost of confidence seeing that the content information that we had to teach before planting the seeds was pretty complicated.  I thought it might have been a little more than they could handle, but the students did a great job listening and I thought we did a great job teaching the information.

Mrs. K Returns

    This week's lesson went much better than last week, and it was a world of difference having Mrs. K back in the classroom.  The students have been back in school after their mini-vacation for over a week now, and they were much more focused and well-behaved all around.  One of our students tends to be distracted more easily than the rest of the class (Alyssa- you know who I‘m talking about J), but as soon as he began to get a little overwhelmed with excitement, Mrs. K whispered something in his ear and he settled down immediately.  Our lesson this week was based on a lesson that they had already done with Mrs. K, and they were able to observe the changes that have occurred in their mixtures of sand and water, clay and water, and humus and water since they first observed them the lesson before.  The students had pictures drawn of what they had observed the first time they looked at these mixtures (which were colored in and labeled) that they could use as a reference in order to note the changes that have occurred over time.  We asked the students to make predictions based on their prior observations before we allowed them to observe the mixtures this week, and we used the think-pair-share exercise so that the students could discuss their predictions with their partners and then share their thoughts with the rest of the class.  This was a good way of keeping the volume down, and making sure they were staying on task, because it is difficult to monitor the discussions even when they are in groups of four or five (which is how their desks are set up).
    We focused on content vocabulary this week, making sure that our students knew the terms that we were using as part of our lesson, and clarifying any potentially difficult vocabulary that surfaced during our discussion of what the students had predicted and observed.  We also focused on misconceptions that the students had about soil, and when we were finished with our observations of the mixtures after allowing them to settle since their last lesson, we handed out a worksheet that asked questions about the common misconceptions that people have about soil.  We gave the students a few minutes to answer all of the questions, and when they were ready, we discussed the misconceptions as a class and had the students explain how and why they know that those misconceptions are not true.  It was nice to see that the students knew the answers to a lot of the misconceptions because we had discussed them in class over the past few weeks, and we could tell that they were learning what we were teaching them which was a relief. 
    The flow of our class was much better this week than it was during last week’s lesson, and we were able to stay on task and have a meaningful discussion because the students were much more well behaved, and we had a good plan for who was going to teach the different parts of the lesson at what time and who was going to help clarify what was being taught and fix any misunderstandings the students had (as well as focus on classroom management), which we divided evenly among the two of us.  I am glad that Alyssa and I were able to bounce back after last week’s belated Halloween lesson, and it made us feel a lot more confident about our ability as teachers to work on our mistakes and use them constructively as a guide for what we need to focus on for our future lessons.

Belated Halloween Lesson

This belated Halloween lesson was straight out of a horror movie!  The students were just coming back from a week off from school, and to make matters worse, their teacher was at professional development for the day, so we were pretty much over our heads to begin with.  The lesson Alyssa and I had planned involved making an edible soil profile, showing the three layers of soil and their components with a few different types of cereal and candy.  The lesson plan seemed great on paper, but we misjudged how much of an impact the classroom teacher had on her students' behavior, so as soon as candy was thrown into the mix their little minds couldn't handle the excitement!  We were more successful with getting the students to wash their hands in an orderly fashion than we had been in our two previous lessons, but we had a hard time with classroom management due to all of the excitement.  I also think that their level of comfort with us now that they have gotten to know us a bit better may have played a part in the difficult time we had keeping them under control, but I think their teachers absence was a major factor in their classroom behavior. 

I thought overall we did a pretty good job regaining our composure after the first wave of madness considering our odds, but I was really bummed while the lesson was going on because I knew it wasn't going the way we had planned it.  Our new goal was simply to make it work however we possibly could, so we focused almost primarily on keeping the class under control while they ate so that we could at least end the lesson with a strong conclusion and make any connections that they had missed due to all of the excitement.  One very important thing that I learned as a result of this lesson was to always have a backup plan or an extension activity for the students to do in case the lesson falls apart or does not go as planned for one reason or another.  If the lesson ends up taking much less time than you had originally expected for whatever reason, you should always have something else planned that you can turn to if your in a pickle.  If you need to call off the entire activity, which certainly crossed my mind a few times during this lesson, then my advice would be that you should not hesitate to do so because some days are better than others, and you could always try again on another day.

I was really stressed out during and shortly after the lesson, but I am definitely glad that I had this not-so-pleasant experience now that it is in the past.  I think this experience gave me the understanding that our lessons are not always going to go as smoothly as we had planned them, which they had so far before today, so it is a good learning experience to see that these things do happen and that it is not the end of the world.  I am excited to get back into the classroom next week, and I think after our next lesson is over, we will be much more confident with our ability to bounce back and leave this experience in our rear view.

 

Soil Lesson Number 2

Our second lesson on soil went just as smoothly as the first one.  Alyssa and I began the lesson by discussing what we had learned last week, and by asking the students what they had learned with Mrs. K during her lesson the week before.  The students had a lot of things to say about what they had learned, and it was a good way of transitioning into the next lesson.  We drew a KWL chart on the board, and filled the middle section in with the Key Questions for today's lesson, and we asked the students to share any questions they had come up with over the week (which we had asked them to write in their journals as they arose).  We introduced the three materials that we would be observing today, which were sand, clay, and humus, and then had a discussion about what the students knew about each material and where they had seen them before.  We showed a Brain Pop Jr. video to the class on soil, and since we already knew before the lesson that Mrs. K's projector did not work, we had the students join us at the reading rug so that we could all see the video play from my laptop (which worked out better than we had expected).
We did a good job managing our materials and distributing them to the class, but we had a little bit of trouble once again with the washing of their hands (same fancy gingerbread soap that the students couldn't get enough of last week).  The hand washing was less of an issue than it was last week because we were more orderly when getting the students to transition from one activity to the next, and we knew that one of us needed to stand at the soap line to keep the students on task and to get them back to their seats as quickly as possible.  Our lesson was connected to the Massachusetts Frameworks, and the students had an opportunity to write about what they had observed and to describe it using as many descriptive words as they could, like we had discussed in the beginning of the lesson.
I thought that Alyssa and I worked very well together again, and even though we had one student who was fooling around a bit, I thought we did a great job keeping the classroom interested and under control.  It was really funny that during last week's lesson, we were referring to humus as if it was pronounced the same way as the humus we eat with pita chips, and the students were all about correcting us as soon as we watched the Brain Pop Jr. video and realized what we were doing!  The students got a kick out of it, and told us that Mrs. Krauch had realized what we were doing last week and had already explained to them how to pronounce the word correctly, but she did not want to interrupt our lesson to do so, which was very thoughtful of her.  The students had a lot of fun again with the lesson, and were clearly very excited to have us back again.

My First Lesson Ever!

I was really nervous about teaching my first lesson ever to a group of 21 fourth graders, but Alyssa and I knocked it out of the park!  The kids had so much fun playing with the soil in the activity that we did, and I could not believe how well they listened to our lesson and stayed interested the entire time.  We were both really nervous about how it was going to go because we had never given a lesson to a real classroom before, but now that we have one under our belt, we will not be nearly as nervous coming into our next lesson this coming week.  It was hard to gauge how the class was going to respond to us as teachers or to our style of teaching in general, or how interested they were going to be with the information that we were teaching them.  I think it is definitely helpful that the students do not get to learn science on a regular basis because it makes it especially interesting to them when we come in to teach our science lessons, and it is something different and fun for them compared to the typical day that they spend in their classroom with the same teacher every week. 
It was a huge help that Alyssa and I met up and practiced our lesson a number of times, pretending as if we were in the classroom teaching the lesson to our students, because it got us to think about the potential problems and issues that may have arisen if we were to approach our lesson in that specific manner.  We were able to designate who was going to teach what parts of the lesson, and we were on the same page the entire time so that we could both jump in and help if one of us couldn't find our words or got confused (which didn't happen as a result of our collaboration).  We both knew what was coming next and what direction the lesson was going to take at each step, and I think that this connection was apparent in our deliverance of the lesson.  I am really going to enjoy working with a partner for these science lessons because we both offer our own unique teaching styles, and can learn from each others mistakes and successes. 
One part of the lesson that could have been a disaster was when we were having the students wash their hands when they were finished observing the soil.  The teacher just bought a brand new bottle of gingerbread soap, and the students could not get enough of it!  They were washing their hands three times over again, and the line quickly built up and could have easily gone out of control if we did not see this happening and were not there to intervene and move the kids along back to their seats.  Next time, we will be sure to think of a more orderly way of getting the students to wash their hands so that this type of potential disaster can be avoided.  Luckily, the students were really well behaved and responded well to our directions, but this level of excitement that comes from having new teachers in the room, along with a new and exciting topic, could have easily led them in a different direction.