The Separation Is In The Preparation!

Yesterday I was so caught up in reading both The Reluctant Disciplinarian and I Read It, But I Don't Get It that I completely forgot it was time to start my Salt Crystal Science Experiment.  I thought, no big deal, I'll just adjust the start and end dates by one day.  I felt I had written out my experiment thoroughly and thought through all of the required materials.  Last week I had a rather lengthy discussion about What We Think We Know About Salt with my fellow scientists (my daughters).  Earlier on Saturday we had talked about predictions and observations.  We'd also talked about the ABC's of scientific drawings A-Accurate, B-Big, C-Colorful.  We discussed how we would try to write down everything we thought and observed, even if we weren't sure if it was important to the actual growing of the salt crystals.

I figured it would take us about an hour to set up the experiment and write down our observations, even if they were fairly thorough.  Really, we just needed to experience the two kinds of salt again and then put water, salt, and a string in jar.  How hard could that be?

I was very excited to try this experiment without knowing much about what would happen.  It would be fun to have this new experience alongside my students/fellow scientists.  I now firmly believe that you should try every experiment on your own, before you try to teach it in a classroom!

I did not anticipate the time it would take to just figure out how to use the microscope and how important it would be to set behavior expectations for the handling of the microscope, the slides, and anything within a 5 foot or so proximity to the microscope.  I also hadn't set up a schedule for who would use the microscope first and for how long.  After several minutes of frustrated waiting by two of my scientists, I realized that they could not draw and look in the microscope at the same time.  Aha! they could take turns looking into the microscope and spend the majority of the time trying to capture their observations with pencil and paper.  I did remember to have them write descriptions as well as draw what they saw.  That was important.  Although we all looked at exactly the same grains of salt, we had very different illustrations.

I did not know (in fact I still don't) whether or not it is important to have the salt crystals completely dissolve in the jar of water.  I'm not even certain it is possible to completely dissolve them, unless the water is heated.  The experiment did not mention heating the water, so I didn't.  I was impressed with my daugthers' perseverance.  They held out longer than I did.  I finally said, "Okay, Stop Stirring and Start Writing."  We made sure we included the observation that it seemed like it would take forever to make the salt dissolve.

I did not anticipate how difficult it would be for me to tie tiny knots onto the toothpicks.  I also should have pre-measured the lengths of string.  Luckily only one of my guesses was so far off that it had to be re-done.

At 9:12pm, my fellow scientists were asking if they could please just go to bed.  They didn't really think they would write anything very good now anyway because they were so tired.

I did really like the fact that I didn't have all of the answers and could honestly say "I guess we'll just have to wait and find out."  But, since you never really know what will happen in a classroom situation, you would be honest saying that even if you'd performed the same experiment for the last 8 years.  My children were very forgiving and it is very important to them that I succeed in learning how to be a teacher, so they made this first evening full of missteps very easy on me.  I can't imagine that my regular class of 29 second graders would have been as patient and helpful.  Maybe I am underestimating them, but I wouldn't want to test it out.

"Science is about investigating and explaining how the world works."

This week, in my primary placement, I was so excited to see a familiar Science lesson.  I had a Science rotation the year before in my children's co-op school and remembered leading a small group through exactly the same activity.  When my CT asked if I wanted to lead Science today, I hesitated a bit and then decided to just jump in.  I remembered all of the fun of the inquiry and exploration but forgot all about the actual instruction.  The kids had a great time trying to figure out how to make their shapes balance on their popsicle sticks by placing the clothespins in just the right place.  I knew that they had performed similar experiments the day before using the tagboard crawfish, but I neglected to call upon their prior knowledge and what they had recently discovered.  I was so excited about getting the students to the part where they started to explore on their own that I didn't do any modeling or really set any expectations for behavior or noise level.  I just wanted them to get to it.
I followed the instructions from the science kit (mostly) and had them perform all of the different experiments.  I was quite pleased with myself for not telling the students how to balance their arches and triangles and letting them figure it out on their own.  However, I'm not sure how much of it will be retained.  I missed a big part.  At the end of the lesson (I knew it was almost the end because we were running out of school day) I did notice there were words pertaining to the previous science lesson written in their word bank.  I called their attention to the words and asked the students if they could tell me what "stable" and "balance point" meant.  As I collected the materials and the students got ready for dismissal, I felt like I'd robbed the students of a great educational opportunity.  They had made a number of observations and many had figured out that their counterweights needed to be below the balance point.  Some even figured out that they could balance with one counterweight if it was directly below the balance point.  I was wishing that I had asked if they had Science Journals.  I was sad to find out that they did and I hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity for them to record their observations and realize/reinforce what they had learned.  It would have been great to have them not only figure out how to make the shapes balance, but to also have a discussion about why.  If the students had a chance to sketch examples of what balanced and what didn't, maybe they would have seen the relationships between the counterweights and the balance point.

I certainly don't think the time was completely wasted.  Because this was one in a series of lessons on Balance and Motion, I think that some of their ideas from their discoveries will stick with them.  They likely learned something.  I know I did.  The discovery and exploration seems to come very naturally, however it is important to also guide the students toward asking questions, making predictions, explaining why they've made a particular prediction, recording and analyzing their observations, comparing their observations to those made by other students, and revisiting their initial question(s) and prediction.  When I read in the Zembal-Saul chapter about Scientific Explanation "the predominant approach has become hands-on activities, which can minimize the importance of big ideas and meaning making" I was quite sure it was a description of my lesson from this week.  It was definitely a strong reinforcement for thorough planning of a lesson and deep knowledge of the subject matter.

I'm revisiting this post after finishing the two chapters in Ready, Set, SCIENCE.  This sentence at the end of chapter 3 seems to make the point that I was trying to articulate above, "While children may have amazing skills and capabilities to learn science, people do not spontaneously generate scientific understanding."  (Michaels et al, 2007 p. 57).

Don't tell me what I know, let me show you

While I was reading "Ready, Set, Science!" this past week, I found myself writing a little note in the margin to remember to BLOG about an experience with one of my students.  The idea of setting our expectations high and not imposing limits on our students' capabilities seems to be a recurring and incredibly important theme.  On one of my last days in one of the classrooms where I was a Teacher Candidate, I had the opportunity to just sit and read with one of the students with whom I worked closely on both math and reading skills.  This was the first time that I'd sat down with her one-on-one.  I took a quick look at the text she had chosen and felt a little pang of concern that she had picked something well beyond her reading level.  However, if this book had piqued her interest, I was perfectly willing to read it with her.  We sat down and decided that we would take turns reading.  She would read until she wanted me to take over, then I would read until a new page started.  The book was wonderful.  It had great descriptions and illustrations and a wonderful story.  We were both very engaged.  I found myself quickly "helping" the student each time she paused on a word.  A few pages in, another student asked if she could come read with us.  My reading partner said it was fine with her.  Soon, she had two people jumping in to "help" with words that seemed difficult.  A page or two later, the student who had joined us asked me a question.  While I was thinking through my answer and quietly responding to her, my reading partner continued reading.  I didn't jump in quite as quickly since I was conversing with the other student.  She was struggling with a word and I found myself thinking back to a recent reading where I learned that students sometimes guess at words based on their beginning sound and the shape of the rest of the letters.  She seemed to be doing just that.  I also noticed that she was saying her "guesses" aloud to check for meaning.  She went back to the beginning of the sentence and read it again a few times, trying out a couple word choices.  I am so glad that I had been distracted, because she came up with the correct word on her own.  I had seen many looks on this student's face before, but never this one.  She felt successful.  I'm sure she was feeling smart!  This is exactly what I wanted her to feel.  I had just seen her confidence grow in an experience with one word.  Had I been reading along with her, I might not have allowed her the time to figure it out on her own.  I would have assumed that she simply didn't know the word and should tell her what it was.  What a loss that would have been.  We immediately changed our strategy and only offered to help with words when asked.  She was very happy to struggle with some of them and asked for help on others.  By "helping" her, I'm rather certain I was getting in the way of her learning.  I do not wish to see students struggle and become frustrated to the point that they lose confidence and give up. But, I am so grateful that I had this experience and hope it will serve as a reminder to me that students often know more, are capable of much more than I expect.  I will try to remember that they need the chance to show me what they know.