Classroom "Culture"

We have began our research on different pathogens.

Being a science unit, our research has been very hands-on as. The science strand ' Living Things" helps us focus on the following:

The study of the characteristics, systems, and behaviours of humans and other animals (including pathogens) ; their interactions and relationships between and among them, and their environment.

They key words that stood out for us was "behaviour", "interaction" and "relationship."

Our big question was: under what conditions do micro organisms like bacteria/fungi thrive?

In order to find out how microorganism, behave and interact with their environment, we made some food for our classroom guests, the metaphorical white elephants -millions of them in 6B.

We made some very tasty pasty dough using white flour and water.

We then weighed the dough...

Then,

We needed to use our estimation skills! We finally adjusted the dough after weighing each portion.

We discussed our variables as all scientists do.

The control was one open ziplock back with the dough in it, placed on the classroom desk.

We adjusted the other ziploc bags to create different conditions.

Read as push!

Unfortunately, the cleaning staff of our school thought the better of this sample.

We have been weighing the dough every day and noting down any changes in weight. With a little more data in hand, we should be able to create a line graph indicating what is going on inside those plastic bags. It will be very interesting to compare the data.

We have started observing how the pathogens in the air are interacting with their environment.

Suddenly there is a party going on and they have all come together. We realised that was why we could finally see them!

A big learning moment for the girls.

Alongside this, we have began comparing the different types of pathogens.

Students were asked to complete a matrix comparing bacteria, virus and fungi and write what they know or think they know about these tiny living things (or non-living- they don't know this yet)

Criteria	Bacteria	Virus	Fungi
Size
What they need to survive
are they harmful or useful when in our bodies
Can we use them in our daily lives?
How can we control them?

The students had 10 minutes to work in pairs and come up with the answers.

The next 10 minutes-

As a whole class we then came up with the following matrix:

And we finally were able to focus on our next research focus:

Our research focus highlighted in red — That's all for today.

*Be nice to our micro friends and they will be nice to you!*

Have a great weekend.

Comments

Classification -Designing Your Lessons for Conceptual Understanding (Part 1)

In this series, we will discuss how we can design lessons for conceptual understanding. Having recently completed an upskilling course with IB, I felt we may all benefit from looking at some of these strategies and how they might look like in our PYP classrooms. Strategy 1: Classification Source: Ibo.org In this post, I will be focusing on the research-backed strategy, "classification". Chadwick (2009) highlights that classification helps develop conceptual understanding by allowing students to organize information, recognize patterns, and understand relationships among concepts. Here are some examples across several disciplines on how I have used tools to classify. Math Class 1) In my math class (Grade 3) instead of having students simply rote learn the names of the shapes and their properties, have them sort the shapes based on the number of sides, angles and symmetry. Even better, use the Concept Attainment Strategy (I keep returning to this strategy be...

Generalization-Designing Your Lessons for Conceptual Understanding (Part 3)

This post is the third of our blog post series on how to design lessons for conceptual understanding. Part 1 here Part 2 here Strategy 3 : Generalizations You may have come across Lynn Erickson's diagram on the structure of knowledge. In my IB workshop's I always like to present the avocado model alongside this diagram when I am talking about facts. The intention of inquiry-based teaching and conceptually-driven understanding (or Concept-based inquiry- whatever terminology suits your fancy) is to enable students to make generalizations. In other words, can they transfer their learning to a new context because they have understood what they learnt. In order to make generalizations, we need to first plan lessons that help students acquire facts/topics that are interesting and worth knowing. Bringing in local and global issues that are relevant to the topic help students as they begin to compare the topics and see emerging patterns. Remember, facts and concepts have a syn...

8 Strategies to Overcome Math Anxiety in the Classroom

Have you ever considered what math anxiety may look like in your classroom? As I prepare to begin my lesson, handing out notebooks or math prompts, I look around and observe my students. As the lesson progresses, I continue to look around and monitor their behaviour. Are there some students who take time to settle down or start to talk about things completely unrelated to math? Does one student ask to go the washroom? Or maybe complain about a stomachache or a headache? Is there a student who may start crying or become angry and indulge in negative self talk? "I am dumb." or "I can never get this right!" and so on and so forth. The more subtle symptoms : Is a student being being extra chatty, taking time to settle down, obsessing about the answer, refusing to answer questions, seldom asking for help, hurtling through work or showing a reluctance to work with others. A broad categories these symptoms would look like this: cognitive difficulties emotional distress...

Learning Never Stops

Search This Blog