After all of the worrying, stress and last minute edits on our lesson, Group 1 managed to carry out a solid lesson after all! We had 14 students show up for our after school program, so that is a great start! Our lesson was on physical and chemical changes of matter.
Of course, it was far from perfect but we made it through. We quickly met before the lesson to print out the pre-test Dr. Smirnova wanted us to use before we even started our lesson. This was not something we had planned for in our lesson! Once we got to Bishop Dunn, we each set up our stations and tried to connect my laptop to the Smart Board. Unfortunately the plugs weren't compatible with Macs and we had to borrow Mrs. F laptop. First, we administered the pre-test to the students and we made sure to tell the students that it was not a test that would be graded, just one to help us know what they already know. Then we began our direct instruction lesson which we used a powerpoint presentation for. Each of us (Kelly, Colin, John and I) were responsible for presenting a few slides of the powerpoint. We did our best to keep the direct instruction clear and concise and keep the students engaged in our lesson. We had demonstrations of chemical, unclear and no change of matter for the students. We mixed baking soda and vinegar, sand and water, and salt and water in beakers to show the children these changes.
Here is our presentation: Group 1 powerpoint
Once we had completed the direct instruction, we began our inquiry lesson. We broke the students up into four groups and gave them each a Investigation worksheet, where they could record their discoveries from each lab. Each member of our group was responsible for creating a lab that would demonstrate either a chemical or physical change of matter. Lab one was creating Goop, a chemical change. Lab two was creating lava lamps in a water bottle, another chemical change. Lab three was aluminum foil boats, a physical change. Lab four was creating a glue bouncy ball, a chemical change. Students were able to work at each lab for about 12 minutes, where they were able to complete the lab and discuss with each of us the changes (if any) they were observing. After the 12 minutes were up, the students rotated to the next lab. Once everyone rotated to each lab, we had a very quick closing discussion. We had originally planned to have the students come up to the Smart Board and fill out the Investigation worksheet and discuss it all together, but we did not have time for that. We also planned to have the students complete an exit ticket where they would answer three multiple choice questions about different changes of matter and then list any facts they learned/questions they had about the lesson. Unfortunately, we did not have time to do either of these activities, so we just verbally asked the students questions about the labs and the changes that they observed. Ideally, we would have had more time for the closing of the lesson, but things do not always go as planned in the classroom! From the questions we did ask, the students were able to answer us correctly and it was evident both there and during the labs that they understood the concept of chemical versus physical change of matter. This was very exciting to witness. The students really enjoyed all of our lab activities.
Here are some pictures from our lesson:
After our lesson, we heard some constructive criticism of our lesson from our classmates and Dr. Smirnova. We were told that in our inquiry lesson, there was no problem for the students to figure out and no clear expectations for the students. There were some more suggestions, but I don't want to bore you with all of those. We will be taking these suggestions and critiquing our lesson plan, in order to create the perfect science lesson plan. Even though we were the first group to go, I think that we set the bar pretty high for our classmates to follow! Even though our lesson might not have been perfect, the students had a great time and learned the difference between the physical and chemical change of matter. Now, we know what we have to do to further improve this lesson and what to do in the future! I am so glad that we are done and that it all worked out in the end.
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