Books, Books, Books!

Here is a trade book I encountered as a student.

October 6, 2011

What happens when you give a university student a picture book?  Well usually they look through it and read it.  Today was no different. It is important as a teacher to know what resources are available and many classrooms and libraries have picture or trade books available.  While these books are fun to read, they may not always be as educational as you would hope. Today we went through a few books to determine what value they could have in a science classroom.  Some books were about specific animals and habitats with vibrant pictures and would have a place in almost any classroom.  Other books had a high entertainment value, but lacked facts and information necessary to educate students on a specific topic.  The books with high entertainment value but a lack of facts would be great to be used in the set of a lesson plan, but an explanation would need to be provided to the students how sometimes things in books are not true and they may be exaggerated in order to create a story.  Even as an adult and an educator it may be difficult to differentiate between fact and fiction in a book, especially if the fiction is presented like facts and if the teacher has little information on a particular topic.

Learning Through Inquiry

October 4, 2011

Today we experienced inquiry learning without even knowing. We started class by completing the task of drawing pictures of the four seasons we experience and writing the dates that each season starts on.  Here is the poster my group created.  

Notice the dates and identifying factors we have included such as rain boots, a bikini, leaves and snowmen. After completing this rather simple task we were then asked why the seasons change.  Most of us had an idea that it had to do with the angle of the earth and the proximity to the sun, but none of us were absolutely sure.  Through the use of models, like globes, we began to consider the possibilities.

Throughout this task it was frustrating to never be given or told the right answer as to why the seasons occur.  We thought we knew the answer, but never being told whether we were right or wrong was not something I am used to because I have always been told whether an answer is wrong, and even after a few guess I was always told the correct answer.  Instead we worked in our co-operative learning groups coming up with many different hypotheses based on our previous knowledge.  Are seasons caused by the tilt of the Earth, are they caused by it’s path around the sun, or is it a combination of both ideas plus the way the Earth turns when the days change? We were given the opportunity to use globes and models to help our own understanding all while trying to answer the question presented to us as well as any other questions that arose in our group as we were trying to answer the initial question.

This activity was a demonstration of inquiry based learning in the sense that it posed one question that we, the students, were able to investigate at our own rate, and we were able to come up with our own ideas as to why the seasons change and choose the answer that seemed most reasonable and made the most sense, rather than being told why the seasons change, what causes the changes without being involved in our learning.

Extensions!

 No I’m not asking for more time, although that’s what a lot of university students use that term for. October 4^th brought about great discussion about extending an activity to gain deeper understanding and even possibly being able to use an activity at a different grade level. One specific example was an activity using one eyes and two eyes and directing a person standing opposite of you to drop a penny into a small cup/tin, based on when you think the penny is directly above the tin.

While this activity can be completed with Kindergarten or Grade 1 students to show that seeing with two eyes is better than one, it can be extended into higher grades, even up to high school showing how depth perception is influenced when we use one or two eyes to see. These extensions all involve studying and understanding how humans see with two eyes and what could happen if we only have one eye, but there are many other extensions.

  One great extension that brings nature into the classroom would be discussing eyes of animals and how other animals see.  Bees have many eyes, predator’s eyes are placed and shaped differently than the eyes of their prey, so it is important for students to understand what differences there are and why the differences occur.  Even the shape of different animals eyes play a large role in how they survive. It is important to understand the content you are teaching and to be prepared to follow up with different activities based on the discussions in class as well as the student's interest and understanding of the topic.