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.