What do you see? What does it mean?

[Kara Sun]

This week at Prairie Creek Molly’s main lesson that I was able to watch was having students work in their “science notebooks” to identify changes that they see around them and write down evidence (a new vocab word) for each change. Below is my backward map of the lesson:

Objectives:

• To encourage students to be curious and become more aware of the changes that they see around them
• To help students think about how they actually can answer the questions that they wonder about as they observe changes that are occurring
• To learn scientific words such as “evidence” in order to prepare students for the foundations of science
• To practice reading, writing and spelling

Warm up: 10 minutes

• The teacher moved into the activity by asking the students: “Look around, what do you notice?”
• The teacher led the students in discussion about what they are noticing, what things are changing, and what these observations tell us about what is occurring in the world around us
• Teacher encourages students to use all of their senses to make observations (except taste)

Motivational Strategies:

• By paying close attention to what things were interesting to the students, Molly was able to ask follow-up questions that pointed students in directions that interested them.
• Molly repeated and responded to every single observation in a way that validated students’ ideas

Activities:

• After the large group discussion (10 minutes), students were told to make a table in their science notebooks where one side was “change” and the other side was “evidence.”
• 15 minutes: They then were split into pairs or triplets to spread out and write things down that they noticed, and what those things told them about changes that were happening. For example, a “change” might be “the turning of the season” and “evidence” might be “most of the leaves have fallen,” “the corn is harvested,” or “it is getting colder.”
• 5 minutes: Students then returned to the full group to pair up with another group and share what they noticed and wrote about
• 15 minutes: The class changed locations and spread out again to write down observations about “changes” and “evidence”
• Students returned to the full group

Closure:

Molly closed out the lesson by having another full-group discussion on what they noticed and learned, and then transitioned into a read-aloud about compost, which relates to the current theme they are learning about: waste.

Follow-Up:

Molly talked about continuing to teach students new vocab that will help them articulate ideas, thoughts, and observations in their science notebooks. She also will continue working on the skill she’s been working on throughout the year of not only encouraging students to be curious and wonder about things, but also to try to figure out answers to the questions that come up for them so that they learn to take initiative in their own learning.

 

The way that Molly structured her lesson was very intentional. She used scaffolding by first guiding the students through the process of noticing evidence and changes, and then gave them more and more independence throughout the lesson so that they could really follow their own interests and learn from each other. Molly took into account her students’ need to move their bodies throughout her lesson. She only had students stay still for about 10 minutes at a time, and allowed them ample time to run around and explore as part of the learning process. I think this is an important thing to remember – that students can learn in ways that are not just sitting still at a desk. I often have seen students in other classes throughout my life being reprimanded for moving around, and teachers sometimes seem to believe that moving around (either in one’s seat or around the classroom) means that students aren’t paying attention and therefore aren’t learning. However, Bloom’s psychomotor domain clearly demonstrates how important it is to incorporate bodily movement into lessons.

I had an interesting discussion with Molly about pairing students up that relates to her instruction and how it plays to students’ strengths and weaknesses. For the activity I described above, Molly assigned students pairs instead of letting them pick. She said that depending on the activity, she sometimes does allow students to choose their own pairs, or puts them with friends on purpose, but for this activity there were other things she was thinking about while pairing. For example, she talked a lot about student levels of literacy/writing in her pairings, as well as student willingness to work with others. She paired two girls where one was quite good at writing and one struggles more so that one could help the other. She paired a girl and a boy who normally wouldn’t play together but were both interested in the activity and easily worked together. She paired a boy who was more talkative and outgoing with a girl who was less so. And an interesting pairing was that of two girls who are quite independent and prefer to do solo work. I think the lesson was successful, and this was helped by Molly’s thoughtfulness with her creation of pairs and the movement that she incorporated into her lesson.

I really like how Molly plans her lessons with multiple ways for students to be successful. For example, one of the prominent parts of this lesson was students practicing their writing skills. However, if a student was not as advanced as their peers in their writing abilities, that did not mean that they failed in the activity. They were still able to successfully make observations about the world around them, ask questions, and attempt to answer them. They were still able to be fully engaged in the lesson, even if they did not have as much written in their notebooks as some others. This is cool to see because sometimes students who are behind in some of the skills that lessons build on are unable to really participate in the lesson. However, this lesson was designed such that students of all different abilities and interests could be successful.

Below is a picture of the students looking at a tree and discussing how to tell that it’s still alive even though it doesn’t have leaves.

[Thomas White]

Hi Kara,

This seems like such a cool lesson! Encouraging students to notice “changes” and “evidence” seems to me a great way to prepare students’ deductive reasoning skills in an environment where they are able to move around and engage with the outside world. I am also impressed by the structure of the class itself. Molly clearly knows each of her students very well, well enough to know their individual strengths and weaknesses to assign them into groups they would do well in. This seems to be a testament to both Molly and the Prairie Creek school!

[Author]

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