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.