First, we began by letting the students ask questions about insects. This gave us good information on what the children already knew and helped me plan my lesson.
Second, we spent some time activating schema. Some children had many experiences with insects and shared them with the class, while others did not have much to fall back on. We took a couple days to build schema before we moved on. We researched insects online and sang songs to help us learn big vocabulary words such as: abdomen and thorax. I have included a short video of the children singing the "Insect Body" song.
Third, we allowed the children to construct a "hypothesis". It was quite interesting to hear the children saying such a BIG word! Next, we gave the children science journals and told them to draw a picture of what they thought the abdomen might look like. Then, each child took a turn looking into the microscope and making observations. Some of the things the children said when looking in the microscope were: "Wow!", "That is so cool!", "So amazing!", "I never imagined it would look like that!". I encouraged them to try and compare to something that they had seen before. Some children thought it resembled water droplets. After viewing the abdomen, the children then drew what they "saw" in their science journal. They compared their results with their hypothesis and shared their finding with the class.
We continued the process above with the thorax, wing and antenna.
Please continue to build upon the things that we are doing in our classroom. Maybe a trip to the public library to check out some books on insects, or a night out in the backyard catching some fireflies? These children are full of curiosity!
Until next time,
Mrs. Weathers
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| Sharing science journals |
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| Comparing our hypothesis with our observations |
