Monday I go to two high school Ecology classrooms to present on freshwater and saltwater ecology. Once again, I am nearly overwhelmed by the possibilities of what I can do with these students. There are so many cool things out there - I wish teachers knew how to narrow down their request for my classroom visits!
Anyway, given the strict time limit, I have decided to plan ahead this time. Here's the modification I think I'm going to make to what I did with the 8th graders.
1) First 10 minutes of class: introduction (who I am, what I do, why I do it) and short discussion on what aquatic habitats entail. I am hoping for a list of various aspects of habitat including food sources and water forces (flow).
2) Three stations, 5-10 minutes each. Students make observations and sketches. Perhaps some guiding questions based on the list we generate during the discussion.
Station 1: flotsam and jetsam from the beach
Station 2: live aquatic inverts (note to self: get aquatic inverts Sunday. Wear old shoes. Better yet, wear boots.)
Station 3: comparison of freshwater and saltwater organisms (maybe - I'm ambivalent on this station at this point...)
Hmmm... 14 students... I'm re-thinking this. Perhaps instead of moving students, I can have four trays: 2 freshwater and 2 saltwater. We can then shuffle the trays throughout 4 groups (instead of three stations) so that groups are limited to 3 and 4 students. I think I'm going to go with this option. This might also be easier to transport. I think I'm going to pre-separate the aquatic inverts into shallow plastic containers as well. Bingo!
3) Discussion and application: Talk about observations (again, focus on feeding and body shape). Show students OK limpet-like fossil. Ask them where this fossil came from and how they think it ate. Reveal that the fossil is from OK (shallow sea).
Ba-daaa!!!
I'll let you know if this goes as smoothly as its planned in my mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment