Last+Science+Class

Hi Guys,

We need to organise what we are going to present for our final science class. EG: How will we go through the 5 Es? I was thinking we could do 1 each and a couple of people could go through the final week. We could include:

-What we did with the students (activities) -student responses and reactions -teaching strategies we used (TPS, POE, OPV, brainstoming, concept mapping) -Science skills and processes

Do you know how long each group has to present for? (10 minutes so 1-2 min each-Liz)

Jill


 * Engage** - Jill
 * Explore** - Jill
 * Explain** - Ariel
 * Elaborate** - Liz & Michael
 * Evaluate** - Liz & Michael

Thank Liz for putting your section up. Hi Guys, Could you all please bring the photocopies of the students journals tomorrow? So I can take a copy? Or any other Work samples you collected in the last week as I don't have a lot of students work samples for my assignment. Thanks, Jill

We had a grade 2 class and we covered the topic of e volution. Our main idea of this lesson was to allow students to make connections between past and present learning experiences they had as well as focus students' thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities to do with the concept of evolution. To begin with, we asked the students questions about what they knew about science in general. The first activity was to draw what they thought a scientist was. The students seemed to perform well in this task with most of them having a board understanding. We shared their thoughts and ideas among the class with students giving their input throughout. Next we started to introduce the concept of evolution. We began by a simple activity of classifying animals to find out what the students already knew as well as areas in which they were confused. The students classified the animals into various categories such as reptiles, mammals, birds etc. They were about to generate more ideas among themselves of different sorts of categories without being directed to do so. For example, they continued classifying the animals into land or sea or even land and sea animals.
 * Engage (Jill)**
 * Week 1**

This was an interesting and beneficial activity as we were provided with the opportunity to further probe student’s beliefs and raise thought-provoking questions. We had many discussions among our individual groups with the students, raising questions such as “why can’t the emu fly if it is a bird?” The idea of animals evolving with time was also of great interest to the students. As the school was lucky enough to have a Mexican Walking Fish, we discussed this fascinating creature and its ability to live in water like fish as well as travel over land for extended periods of time. We also briefly discussed adaptation and how this creature survived in its various environments. The science process skills involved in this lesson were classifying, predicting animal changes, comparing features on different animals as well as students effectively communicating their ideas.

**Explore (Jill)**
 * Week 2**

This week, we began the lesson with an introduction which recapped what the students learnt and remembered from the previous week. The students actively participated in a rich discussion and were able to recall the key terms used such as ‘adaptation, ‘survival’, ‘habitat’, ‘environment’, ‘evolve’ and ‘change’ which were all to do with our topic of evolution. We took the students through a power point which showed various animals evolving and changing over time to adapt to their habitats. (EG: a water snake/ land snake… rabbit/ hare). This was visually appealing and through this we were able to generate an in-depth discussion of how and why these animals evolved over time giving students an opportunity to explore further into the topic. We encouraged the students to put together rich sentences with key ideas and terms before sharing with the rest of the class. This teaching strategy worked well as we avoided getting vague statements from the children. It also helped the students to reinforce the key terminology we had been focusing on. The children made predictions of why certain animals evolved and their thought processes and ideas they gave were mostly logical and showed a good level of understanding.

This activity was followed with another task the children had to complete involving them drawing a particular animal which had to adapt to their given environment (EG: Wetlands/ Antarctic Ice, Desert etc.) In our smaller groups, we asked the students to TPS (Think, Pair Share) to see what ideas they came up with. The students preformed surprising well on this task and even managed to label their drawings, stating reasons for their chosen animals as well as their particular features. I asked the students in my group to explain their drawings and was able to probe their thoughts with further questions to evaluate the level of their understanding and to what extent they were able to grasp the concept of evolution. As the children shared their drawings with their classmates, it was nice to see a genuine interest from the other students and the constructive feedback they gave. As this session was mainly about exploring further into the topic of evolution, we made certain the students used the proper terms when sharing and putting forth their ideas. As a class, we generated a lot of questions on what we already knew as well as what we still wanted to know and further discover. Week 3 Explain Ariel This week, we began the lesson with a recap of what students have learnt from the previous lesson. The discussion included issues, such as why animals need specific habitats to survive, what are some of the different habitats that animal survive in, etc. which helps students to review and memorize the main ideas from last two lessons. Then we started the lesson by singing the “Chameleon song” which was relevant to our topic. Before we sing the song, we showed the class a relevant cartoon video clip. Children were really engaging with the cartoon clip and willing to sing it all together, we played guitar and sang the song with the whole class altogether. After that we planned a small creative drawing task on white board, which students came up and drew a person that might live in a particular habitat and explained the reason. This activity helped the whole class to review the habitats and adaptations that students had learnt from last few lessons.

This activity was followed with another task which children had to make a mask which needed to include at least one real/make up habitat. This activity was aiming to allow students to be hands on in making something and provide support to those students who did not really grasp the concept of added features to their animal. Through the hands on activity, children showed us a good understanding of the topic and their creativity and imagination.

At the end of the lesson, we showed the whole class with a video clip called How Evolution Happens. Students actively participate into the discussion and came up with a lot of questions. Though we only got a short time to introduce this video and did a little bit discussion around it, it contributed a motivated discussion environment for our next lesson, at the same time, it helped to facilitate students to take a step further from where they were and leaded them into a deeper thinking level. Elaborate **(Michael)**
 * Week 4**

This week, we began the lesson with another recap of what we had covered so far to refresh the students previous learning. Then we introduced the concepts of DNA and mutations with a demonstration using the interactive whiteboard that showed how natural selection works from the perspective of camouflage from predators and ability to get food. This was followed by group discussions with the class using probing questions to find out what their current understanding was following lines of reasoning so the students are best able to articulate their thoughts. The students were very engage during this activity and wanted to experiment some more with the interactive programs on the whiteboard. This was followed by a group activity that demonstrated the splitting of genetic lines from a single parent species through mutation. This was done by giving each group an identical picture of an animal. The students then had to copy the animal onto a piece of paper as closely as they could and then hand it to the person in front of them. This was repeated until everyone had drawn one picture each. The activity went fairly well and the students were able to explain how mutations changed the parent species into 4 different branches. At the end of the lessons the students were able to explain their understanding about the topics covered in this lesson when they were preparing to write in their science journals.

EVALUATE (Wk 5)- Liz

This week we began the lesson with a short recap of the previous lessons. We elicited from students what they could remember about what we did, and what were the key terms that we used. The students needed a bit of prompting to remember the key terms "natural selection" but were familiar with the term "mutation." We decided that this was ok becasue natural selection is a fairly advanced concept to understand for grade 2's. A few students were still able to talk about how and why things change and that that change "becomes part of their DNA and passed onto their babies."I think that there was a high level of understanding despite the corrrect terminology not being used. They had some understanding of the concepts involved.

We got students to partiviapte in an activity where they took on a mutation each and had to see how this mutation affected their ability to access their food source. The mutations were designed to lessen student ability to access their food source (lollies) so that they could see that the current human design is ideal for interacting with the world that we currently live in because of natural selection. The mutations included extra long fingernails, limited vision, and limited use of hands and arms. Each student took on the mutations and then were timed to see how much longer it took to access their food source. The students enjoyed the activity and it definitely appealed to the kinasethetic learners as it was very hands on, interactive learning. The discussion that took place following this was rich with understandings from the whole unit and included discussions abour the types of habitiats that certain mutations would benefit an animal in. Throughout this discussion students used most of the key terms that have come up throughout the last 5 weeks. Students enjoyed this activity and it seemed to consolidate their learning.

The rest of the session was spent exploring how the earth has evolved (continental drift) over millions of years and included predictions (POE, TPS) about how the world will continue to adapt and evolve. This discussion led to current phenomenons about how natural disasters, global warming and climate change affect the earths survival and how it might "adapt" in order to survive some of these changes.

Finally, we looked at the crocodile and looked at why this unique animal has managed to survive when the dinosaurs did not. Looked at how crocodiles have evolved and adapted to the earths changing conditions to become a perfect example of evolution and survival.