... and this is why science is awesome

Going into this week's lesson I was feeling a little nervous about how things would go. In my first blog post, I admitted that I am a total planner. I like to know what is coming up so I can be prepared. Working with live insects in our science lessons has been challenging for me because we have to be totally flexible and come up with contingency plans for our lessons. When it's a full week between science classes, it's hard to say exactly what state we'll find our little caterpillar friends in!

This week, the caterpillars had almost all entered the chrysalis stage. At the very end of class, I walked around the room holding a chrysalis so students could get a close look. As I sat with one group of girls looking at the chrysalis, it hit me... just a day or two ago, this was a caterpillar crawling around and eating everything it could find. Now it's a little case of black and shiny gold, and in just a few more days, it's going to be a butterfly. That's AMAZING! The girls and I were all awe struck thinking about the transformation the insect had already gone through. Moments like that are why teaching science is awesome. It's worth working through uncertainty with unfamiliar materials to be able to experience moments like this one.

So, with that said, this week we focused on a few different aspects of teaching science: content vocabulary, the flow of the lesson, and addressing science misconceptions. With science, there is often new vocabulary. In our lesson this week, the students made some observations of the caterpillar cups and asked questions about what they saw. They actually asked questions that lead right to our vocabulary words. Alisha and I were able to give the students words like "exoskeleton," "molting," and "chrysalis" as labels for concepts they had already noticed but weren't sure of the scientific term for.

Managing the flow of the lesson involved some serious thought during our planning time as well as some flexibility to improvise and adjust as we were actually teaching. Alisha and I spend a lot of time deciding what order do teach our lesson in while we are planning. We talk about what can transition students logically from one activity to the next. However, as carefully as we plan, we don't always stick to the exact times we write in our lesson plan. We are constantly reassessing as we teach and try to move the lesson along in increments that make sense for the class rather than following our lesson plan exactly.

Finally, the science misconception. Last week, we overheard some students talking about how the caterpillars were spinning cocoons out of their silk. Actually, Vanessa cardui caterpillars become a chrysalis after their final molt. They do not spin a cocoon. We decided that this would be an important misconception to address. It also tied in nicely to our lesson on the chrysalis stage. I think the students understood our explanation. They asked us some really great questions about why the caterpillars produce silk at all that made me feel confident that they absorbed the new information.

All in all, a great week!