Wonderful surprises

So my plan this week and next - along with the other 6th grade science teacher and the MMD teacher also teaching the 6th grade science modules - was to introduce the students to living things. Last year the students had a lot of trouble with differentiating between the "biotic" (living organisms and their products) and the "abiotic" (nonliving things) - one large issue was classifying plants as abiotic. They also had trouble with a lot of the vocabulary.

Using one of the old textbooks (Glencoe's Science Interactions: Course 1) we planned to go into a mini-unit on "what is life." In particular, there's an activity observing seeds and rocks in order to compare and contrast them. The idea is that they look the same/similar, and to get the kids thinking about what seeds do that make them living (that rocks don't). From there we would/will segue into the 6 characteristics of life (has cells, grows/develops, reproduces, uses food/water and produces waste, responds to stimuli, adapts to environment).

So today, after talking about the observations they made of living things, I moved into defining organisms. They all already knew the word. Color me shoked - and I'm serious. While they brainstormed in pairs after that on what characteristics living things have (I didn't use the word characteristics, though perhaps I should have), they were constantly surprising me. They knew vocabulary that I didn't expect them to know - "eliminates gas," "respiration," "cells" - and had a far better understanding of the concepts we'll be learning. I had to explain cells to my students last year in about 10 minutes as we began talking about genetics - these guys already know.

And so I find myself wanting to apologize for not trusting the 5th grade teachers to teach the modules (though I had heard from more experienced teachers that science often fell to the wayside in middle school). Once I realized how much they knew, I tried to ask each class to share a bit about what they'd learned the year before. They had done so much. They have a really good basis for what we'll be working on this year, and I'm really happy about that. It'll mean much more success for them, and so I'm hoping we'll be able to go into more depth with the concepts and that I'll be able to breeze by the simpler stuff and leave time for the more extended projects and more difficult concepts.

I'm already reaping the benefits of the modules, I think. Or at least I hope so. *knocks on wood*

Classroom Photos: August 2007

The far side of the room: some of the student desks (note the buckets for materials: no need to get up and go to the pencil sharpener). The cabinets and the sinks. The tables are so big and the room so small, I had to put the tables right up against the drawers.

View of part of the class: the slanted E and tables against the wall, my environmental ed and lab bulletin boards, my desk, and my Williams banner.

My introduction to me bulletin board. Includes pictures of family and friends, a map that traces my route from NH to KY, and photos from my travels abroad.