Learning Activities
The following are three samples of activities I will use with my students. The first two will be used to help introduce students to the concept of thinking like a scientist and using a scientific notebook. The third activity is a cumulative activity that will gauge students' knowledge and understanding of life cycles.
How do Scientists Think?
This is a class discussion outlined in Nurturing Inquiry. It begins with having students help create a class list of all the things that scientist do. Then we will talk through each statement one at a time. I will ask students if they do those things. Some examples of what student could come up with are: read, ask questions, do experiments etc. As you ask students if they do these things and they begin to say yes you will observe that students are like scientists. The purpose of this activity is for students to realize that we all think like scientists.
What will a butterfly eat?
This will be an inquiry based experiment. As a class or in pairs we will develop a hypothesis about what food we can put in the butterfly enclose that they will eat. I will encourage to students to think of items that the butterflies may not like to eat as well. As a class we will select four different items to test. Students will observe the food items butterflies prefer and what they may avoid. Students will record all questions, discussions and observations in their scientific notebooks. This will be one of our earlier activities to help students become accustomed to using their scientific notebooks.
Compare and contrast life cycle of frogs and chickens.
Near the end of the year students will utilize the data from the scientific notebooks to develop a presentation on how the life cycles of frogs and chickens are similar and different. Students will be able to utilize the format they have access to at home for some this will be a power point and others will use a poster. Each presentation will need to give at least eight facts to demonstrate their understanding, a diagram of each life cycle with correct terms to demonstrate their knowledge, and a summary statement to explain what they have learned through this process.
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