Teaching...Day Six!

     This week’s focus skill when planning was to make engineering and technology connections within our lesson. What does engineering and technology look like for second graders? Well, useful skills like using scissors and glue properly and safely are a part of the Massachusetts frameworks for this area. It worked out well making this connection because these skills fit in smoothly with the activities we had planned.

     This week’s lesson was based on the butterfly life cycle. Students created butterfly life cycle folders that included a cover, a cut and paste activity and a writing/gluing activity. The cut and paste activity required the students to cut out six images that represented the growth from egg to adult butterfly. The images were  pasted in the correct order onto their folders. Next, the students pasted labels that corresponded to the appropriate images.

     Another activity that the students completed also involved ordering the four stages of the life cycle. Yet instead of using paper images, the students glued various pasta pieces onto the correct places on their worksheets. Egg pastina pasta was used to represent the butterfly eggs, spiral rotini pasta represented the caterpillars, medium shells pasta represented the chrysalises and farfalle pasta represented the butterflies. The students loved gluing their pasta onto their life cycle folders. Overall, this was a fun activity that helped the students understand the four stages of the butterfly life cycle.

     Regarding their use of the scissors, glue sticks and liquid glue, the students did a great job using these tools appropriately and efficiently. The students also used these tools safely. They didn’t play around with their scissors or glue, but properly used these tools to help them with the activities. Overall, my wonderful co-teacher and I had a good experience teaching more about these beautiful insects with our second-grade scientists!

Teaching...Day Five!

     Today was a very hectic day with our second graders! You can definitely tell that it is Thanksgiving week! Like always, our lesson was divided into two parts by the students’ recess break. One of the activities that the students did during the first half of the lesson was write about their scientific observations in their science journals. Our lesson incorporated instructional technology as we showed the students a brief movie on the laptop, which showed a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. After viewing this video, we asked the students to write 2-3 sentences about what they saw and learned from this video. In groups, the students also observed their butterflies and chrysalises in their nets. Again, the students recorded their observations through drawings and writing in their journals. Writing is an important aspect to include in science lessons because it provides students with the opportunity to communicate their ideas about science.  Science usually involves many hands-on activities, but including writing is just as important because students need to practice expressing their thoughts and ideas through the art of writing. 

     Speaking of hands-on activities, the second half of our lesson involved the students constructing a model butterfly. Each group of students was given two model butterfly body parts. As we read clues describing the functions of these parts, the group who believed they had the correct part raised their hands. The correct group brought their butterfly body part to the front of the room where Katie and I constructed a giant 3-D butterfly. Also, as each part was added to the model, the students followed along and labeled the part on their worksheets as we also labeled a poster of the butterfly body parts. After all eight parts were discussed, labeled and put together on the model, our butterfly took shape and became a great teaching tool to show the students the butterfly body parts in 3-D.

Overall, despite the initial chaos in the room, the students were given opportunities to write about science, utilize instructional technology and learn about the interesting body parts of these beautiful insects. I look forward to our next lesson when we will teach about the butterfly’s life cycle!

    

Teaching...Day Four!

     Today was another exciting lesson with our curious second graders. Throughout the week they have been carefully observing their caterpillars grow and change shape. An important aspect of our lessons that has helped the students to talk about these observations has been the content vocabulary introduced each week. Today the students used last week’s vocabulary words as they told us about their caterpillar observations. This week’s content vocabulary centered on words related to the molting process and the chrysalis. After introducing words such as molting, shed, exoskeleton, frass, head capsule, and chrysalis, the students were able to describe their observations using these terms. I believe that helping students identify content vocabulary and giving them the opportunity to use these new words in conversation helps students to understand the words in their contexts rather than through mere memorization. We also included a vocabulary review game in today’s lesson with which the students matched the vocabulary word with its corresponding meaning and picture. Using video clips and pictures that illustrate the various words are also useful tools that help students understand such sophisticated science terms.

     This week our lesson flowed smoothly as we reviewed last week’s word wall terms and transitioned into discussing the molting process and the change into the chrysalis. Our lesson was structured so that there were not any time delays. In fact, we actually had the opposite challenge of keeping to our allotted time! Today we did not have enough time to close the lesson with our planned review of the vocabulary game because the students needed to get to their next class. Although I think it’s great that we’ve had more than enough activity time planned for our lessons, we definitely need to work on keeping to our designated science time!

     As the class discussed their observations of their caterpillars, many of the students agreed that their caterpillars had become cocoons. Because this is a common misconception about caterpillars, we explained to the students about the differences between cocoons and chrysalises. Another false idea that the students had was that the caterpillar waste they observed was caterpillar eggs. We explained that this was not eggs, but frass. We also explained how the larger black material was actually the head capsules the caterpillars had shed during the molting process.

     Overall, I feel that the students were introduced to many important words and concepts today. I was very impressed that these seven-year-old students accurately used last week’s vocabulary words in conversation. They also started to use some of the words they learned about today during class discussion time. I look forward to next week’s lesson with our second grade scientists! 

Teaching...Day Three!

  It was great to be back with the students today after missing last week’s class due to the unexpected effects of an October snow-storm! This past week has definitely gone to show how flexible teachers need to be when unexpected circumstances arise. This blog will focus on three more important aspects to consider when teaching science: classroom management, process skills, and the lesson conclusion.

     In order for any lesson to be a success, a very important factor is that of classroom management. Teachers need to keep some form of order in the classroom and establish routines that students can easily follow. In our science class, Katie and I have used a variety of classroom management techniques that help us to gain students’ attention. Some cues we use to help refocus students when needed are the echo clapping in which students repeat a particular clap and the “One, two, three- look at me!” cue after which students respond “One, two- look at you!” Because these routines are familiar to students, they usually respond immediately when these cues are used. Another great technique Katie used today to gain students’ attention during an activity was to ask the students to touch their heads, shoulders, knees, etc. if they could hear her speaking. This strategy definitely got students to stop what they were doing and focus on Katie while she gave the next directions. Another strategy that we have used is to include both whole group instruction as well as small group work. When students work in groups of three, we also assign a number to each student in the group. In doing so, we can easily assign specific tasks to certain number students to help the activities to flow more smoothly.

     Another important aspect of teaching science is the incorporation of process skills.  Today our students used the skills of observation and collecting data. Using hand lenses, the students carefully observed the caterpillars. Building upon previous lessons in which the students learned how to make safe observations using four of their senses, students continued to use this process skill to observe the appearance of the caterpillars. The students then recorded their observations in their science journals through detailed drawings and sentences.

     The lesson ‘finale’ is also an essential part of the science lesson. The words spoken during this time may end up being what students remember the most from the entire lesson. During our conclusions, we usually gather the students at the classroom meeting area. We review our key questions of the lesson through a brief discussion in which students may share what they have learned. We also review any key vocabulary terms we have introduced during the lesson. These words are then posted on a science word wall and categorized into groups so that students can visualize how some words are connected. We also tend to make some reference to next week’s lesson in order to keep students engaged and to heighten their curiosity for our next class.

     Overall, these three aspects are key points that teachers need to consider when lesson planning. Classroom management is the key to whether or not students will ultimately learn the lesson objectives, process skills are tools students learn how to use which aid in their scientific explorations, and the conclusion is an important time to wrap up and bring a sense of closure to the lesson.