Science Content Area Introduction

When teaching science, it is important to focus on only one, maybe two MA Curriculum Standards. Focusing on too many can be overwhelming for unattainable. This makes it easier for students to learn the material. It is important to have a specific goal for every lesson. In science, it can be easy to create cool experiment, but the kids didn’t actually learn anything. Making sure you are have a focused goal for every experiment will be more successful. Science notebooks can be incorporated into science lessons for all grades. It is useful for recording observations, thoughts, drawings, and evidence of learning. Differing from writing journals, the students cannot chose the topic they write about and have to do it in a specific, structured way. Doing outside observations can be a great learning tool in science to get the students moving and noticing the world around them. In science, collecting evidence of learning can be done through various types of assessment. Their writing, drawings, and oral conversations can be assessed for learning, not just in the form of a test. When teaching topics in science it is important to not only cover the basics, but push students thinking to a deeper level. Doing the basics is not enough. This takes time during the school day and good planning of a unit. When teaching science it is important to “provide your students with exciting science experiences that extend their natural fascination with the world and help them learn the science skills and concepts they will need in later schooling and life.” Technology is a great resource for teaching science. Kids can use it to research and explore things that are not possible to do in the classroom. When teaching science it is important to encourage curiosity in the students. You want them to raise questions, and have their questions be answered. Science can help students be more open minded and sensitive to the living and nonliving environment around them.

Fish Fertilizer Blind Study Lesson Plan

Seedling Blind Study

Grade Level and Unit: Grades 1 and 2, Wampanoag Harvest 1600

Session and Description of Lesson Tasks: Students will be given bean seeds that have been germinated. They will be planting them in either a blue or green cup. One set of cups will be given fish fertilizer and the other will not. The students will not know which cups received the fertilizer. The study is going to simulate what the Wampanoag Indians used on their crops.

Materials needed: Cups, seeds, dirt, fertilizer, and popsicle sticks.

Grouping Decisions: Students will be working as a group to discuss the study and then individually to plant seeds.  

Learning goals/Objective(s) What are your core ideas for this lesson? What do you intend all students to know and understand? I want students to understand that the Wampanoag Indians used fertilizer to help their crops grow. I also want them to understand the basics of doing a blind study.	Language Objectives? What language will you model during the lesson? What language do you expect to hear during student discourse? Blind Study Variable Fertilizer
Standards: How do the learning goals relate to the standards?
Connect and Anticipate: In what ways does this lesson build on students’ previous knowledge? What student strategies and responses do you anticipate? What misconceptions and struggles might students have? Students have been studying the Wampanoag Indians and I will be discussing with them how the Indians grew their crops. I will explain they used things like fish and seaweed to give the soil nutrients. We will then talk about how we could study if this fertilizer worked or not. Students will develop a plan on how they could do this including filling out a worksheet with their thoughts and predictions. Some students may struggle with the concept of a blind study but I anticipate that all of the class discussions we have on the subject will help them understand.
Focus Questions Consider what questions you will use to focus on students’ thinking to encourage sense-making and discourse. Launch: To introduce the activity/motivate students. How could we study if the fertilizer works? Have you ever planted something before? Explore: To assess students’ understanding and to advance their thinking as they work independently, in partners or small group What is a blind study? What is a variable? What are we trying to study? Summary: To facilitate the analysis and synthesis of ideas shared at the end of the lesson What are your predictions about what will happen to the beans that received the fertilizer and the beans that did not?

Evidence: How will you know what students understand? What evidence will you collect? (If there is an exit task, what will be its focus to inform you instructional next steps?) I will be able to check students understanding based on their responses on the worksheet. I will also be able to check their understanding based on their participation and answers during the group discussion. There will be a follow up lesson to this based on the growth of the seedlings where I will also be able to gather evidence of student understanding.

Pitfalls and Solutions:

                ELL: No accommodations are necessary for these students.

Special Ed.: There will be three teachers implementing this lesson and able to assist any students with difficulties they are encountering.

Reflection: I think this lesson went really well. The students were engaged and had thoughtful responses and questions about the study. They are excited to see if their seed received the fertilizer. In the future I would try to incorporate different seeds into the study so we could also analysis how well the fertilizer works on different plants.

Fish Fertilizer Blind Study Follow-Up Lesson Plan

Seeding Blind Study Lesson Plan Follow-up

Grade Level and Unit: Grades 1 and 2, Wampanoag Harvest 1600

Session and Description of Lesson Tasks: In this lesson students will be measuring the growth of their plants and testing their predictions on whether the fish fertilizer helped the bean seeds grow.

Materials needed: Plants, ruler, pencil, worksheet

Grouping Decisions: Students will be working individually.

Learning goals/Objective(s) What are your core ideas for this lesson? What do you intend all students to know and understand? I want students to understand that the Wampanoag Indians used fertilizer to help their crops grow. I also want them to understand the basics of doing a blind study.	Language Objectives? What language will you model during the lesson? What language do you expect to hear during student discourse? Blind Study Variable Fertilizer
Standards: How do the learning goals relate to the standards? Massachusetts Science/ Teachnology/Engineering Frameworks: Pre-K- 2 Recognize that animals (including humans) and plants are living things that grow, reproduce, and need food, air, and water.
Connect and Anticipate: In what ways does this lesson build on students’ previous knowledge? What student strategies and responses do you anticipate? What misconceptions and struggles might students have? Students will be measuring the plants they planted two weeks prior. We will be measuring plant growth based on length and number of leaves. Students will compare the total length of the plants in blue cups and green cups to base their judgment on whether the fertilizer worked or not. Students may have difficulty using a ruler but teachers will be available for support.
Focus Questions Consider what questions you will use to focus on students’ thinking to encourage sense-making and discourse. Launch: To introduce the activity/motivate students. Why are we doing this study? Do you think the blue or green plants had fertilizer? Why? Do you know how to use a ruler? Explore: To assess students’ understanding and to advance their thinking as they work independently, in partners or small group How tall did your plant grow? How many leaves did your plant grow? Summary: To facilitate the analysis and synthesis of ideas shared at the end of the lesson What plants grew the tallest? How can we add the totals up?

Evidence: How will you know what students understand? What evidence will you collect? (If there is an exit task, what will be its focus to inform you instructional next steps?) The evidence I will collect is their filled out worksheet with their measurements and drawing. I will be able to tell the students understanding based on their responses on the worksheet.

Pitfalls and Solutions:

                ELL: No accommodations are necessary for these students.

Special Ed.: There will be three teachers implementing this lesson and able to assist any students with difficulties they are encountering.

Reflection: This lesson went really well. The plants without the fertilizer ended up growing taller so the students had a great discussion about the factors that could have caused this.

Science Content Area Reflection

I think the most important things I learned about teaching science is that with the correct amount of scaffolding no subject is too intense or difficult to cover in the classroom. In my practicum there is little explicit instruction about science, it is covered in the everyday experiences children have. I really liked how there was fish tanks and a toad for the students to look at everyday and to track their growth. Another science activity we did was to have caterpillars in the class and they grew in to butterflies. The kids really liked this, and because we did it in the beginning of the year it really brought the whole class together as a community watching the caterpillars each day. I think science is a really useful tool to do this with because children don't need any background knowledge before they analyze or explore something. They can just have ideas or ask their questions.

In the lesson plans I wrote up the students had never planted beans in this way before. I thought it was a really cool lesson and incorporated a lot of other themes going on in the class at the time. One of the coolest parts was the children were also learning about place value so when we were adding up the heights of the plants we used Deines Blocks to keep track. Science incorporates so many subjects and I want to continue to learn more about how to effectively integrate lessons into a classroom.