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.