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!