Core Decisions of Teaching
What?
With students’ previous knowledge of the concept of an ecosystem and last week’s lesson on creating a terrarium, we will engage students through a hands-on creation of an aquarium. We will encourage students to make observations of the aquarium and record amount, size, color, and description of materials (gravel, water, elodea, duckweed, and algae) on their worksheet. They will use these observations to guide their predictions of what will happen within the ecosystem. We will work with students to identify the properties of the ecosystem and describe the relationships between the natural elements, particularly the relationship between the sun and its effect on the terrarium/aquarium.
How?
We learned about the students’ prior knowledge of ecosystems during our opening discussion in the first lesson. We took notes about students’ prior knowledge and will write those on a poster board (ecosystem chart), which we will bring with us to the second lesson. During our review, we will have them discuss their observations of the terrarium over the course of the previous week. We will also record these on our ecosystem chart. We will assign student roles and divide jobs in order to maintain fairness among the group participants as we carry out the procedure.
We will develop a pattern structured from kinesthetic involvement (gathering materials) → observations (recorded on worksheet) → kinesthetic involvement (placing the materials into the aquarium). The thought behind this approach is that students will understand their expectations as scientists and understand how a systematic and methodical approach, such as following a procedure, is a necessary component of scientific inquiry.
Why?
In building the aquarium with a hands-on approach, students will become constructors of knowledge by actively engaging with the materials and conducting observations to engage in inquiry-based learning. Students will be able to see a self-contained model of a natural process to better understand how ecosystems work in the world around them. They will make predictions about how the environment will change within the aquarium/terrarium, as well as predict how the ecosystem will continue to function as it grows and develops over time. They will be able to see how interconnected various elements are in the natural world, specifically, they will see how one component or organism is contingent upon another in order to maintain the viability of an ecosystem.
With students’ previous knowledge of the concept of an ecosystem and last week’s lesson on creating a terrarium, we will engage students through a hands-on creation of an aquarium. We will encourage students to make observations of the aquarium and record amount, size, color, and description of materials (gravel, water, elodea, duckweed, and algae) on their worksheet. They will use these observations to guide their predictions of what will happen within the ecosystem. We will work with students to identify the properties of the ecosystem and describe the relationships between the natural elements, particularly the relationship between the sun and its effect on the terrarium/aquarium.
How?
We learned about the students’ prior knowledge of ecosystems during our opening discussion in the first lesson. We took notes about students’ prior knowledge and will write those on a poster board (ecosystem chart), which we will bring with us to the second lesson. During our review, we will have them discuss their observations of the terrarium over the course of the previous week. We will also record these on our ecosystem chart. We will assign student roles and divide jobs in order to maintain fairness among the group participants as we carry out the procedure.
We will develop a pattern structured from kinesthetic involvement (gathering materials) → observations (recorded on worksheet) → kinesthetic involvement (placing the materials into the aquarium). The thought behind this approach is that students will understand their expectations as scientists and understand how a systematic and methodical approach, such as following a procedure, is a necessary component of scientific inquiry.
Why?
In building the aquarium with a hands-on approach, students will become constructors of knowledge by actively engaging with the materials and conducting observations to engage in inquiry-based learning. Students will be able to see a self-contained model of a natural process to better understand how ecosystems work in the world around them. They will make predictions about how the environment will change within the aquarium/terrarium, as well as predict how the ecosystem will continue to function as it grows and develops over time. They will be able to see how interconnected various elements are in the natural world, specifically, they will see how one component or organism is contingent upon another in order to maintain the viability of an ecosystem.