In my second grade class, I will begin my science lesson by bringing in a collection of rocks with many different characteristics. I will show the students my rocks and ask them how I can organize these rocks by how they look. I will pass around the rocks so that the students can feel their different textures and look at their various colors. I will model how to categorize the rocks first on the board by writing the word "rough", and showing the students a rock that is "rough" to touch. After this I will have students raise their hands and share an attribute/characteristic that they thought of as they were looking at and feeling the rocks. We will create 4 different categories to sort our rocks into as a class. Then, I will have the students work in groups to categorize four rocks of their own. After this activity, we will all come together and I will ask them what they learned from today. I will also tell them that today we conducted a science experiment. I will ask them what they think science is, writing their ideas on the board. Then I will tell them a simple definition of science and write that definition on a poster that will hang in the room for the next couple weeks. I will explain that today we were doing science through observation, which is "looking" at things around us.
We will continue our discussion on science the next day and the students will add rocks they found at their homes to their project from the day before. We will display every groups' project in the classroom.
This activity would be fun for 2nd graders to do. I was in a classroom last fall and they had a rock collection in the corner of the room. The kids loved touching, looking, and categorizing them. I like how you will have them bring rocks from home to share with the class. It is a great way to get their families involved with their school work.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great activity for second grade students. I really like how well planned out it was and how many different criteria it covers. There are so many different things you as a teacher can do with this activity and it encompasses many different subject areas. This unit could easily turn into a two or three week unit with all of the activities you can spur off of this activity.
ReplyDeleteYou were very detailed with this activity and I appreciated that because your directions and objectives were clear. I think that it is so important to have a discussion after an activity such as this, especially a discussion about science. I loved how you didn't just tell your students what science is. Instead you had them brainstorm, after completing this activity, what they thought science was. The hands-on approach was also very effective when teaching experiments. I feel that it is so important for the students to experiment, rather than watching their teacher do all of the work. Great activity!
ReplyDeleteHi Rose,
ReplyDeleteI like using rocks as an activity for observation and classification, since many children love to pick up and collect rocks. You also can get a wide variety of samples pretty cheaply, so it's a nice hands-on activity for the classroom. I think it's great that you are introducing students to the idea of classification early. Rocks can be a nice set of objects to classify because there are many different ways that they could be classified (color, texture, weight, etc).
You note that observation is "looking" at things around you -- as I'm sure you'll emphasize during the rock activity, all the senses can be used for observation (touch, smell, sight ... even hearing if you tap the rock with something). However, we usually tell the students not to use taste (for safety reasons!).
Nice start to a good, hands-on process.
Best,
Dr. B.