Oh the amazing things we learn…

It is official! I have THE BEST STUDENTS EVER!

This week was awesome. My “agents” (aka students) were to create a lesson plan to teach the vocabulary for this bundle. They worked on them in groups on Monday and presented them on Tuesday. I had groups that not only presented their words, but also created work pages, study guides and pre- and post- knowledge assessments for their fellow agents! They took to mind all of the strategies I have talked about and used with them and USED them in the way the strategies are meant to be used. This is great for me, because it shows me that the ways I assess them fits, it works for them.

Wednesday was spent in the lab, as usual for us at the OBSI. We made raisins dance…well we played with the idea of density. Using baking soda and vinegar, we create CO2 to see what effect the density of the gas had on the density of the raisins. This was definitely on the Einstein-side of our spectrum. We discussed the results and made sure we had our observations written out…I decided against writing a full conclusion in this lab. This was due to the fact that the discussions we had were sufficient and I want to compare this lab with next week’s lab. The next write up will include the observations from this lab.
Thursday was spent with a lecture. One of the first true lectures I have presented. This bundle is on physical and chemical properties and changes. Physical properties are something the agents have encountered before and they are fairly well understood…some agents even have had experience with the idea of chemical properties, however the idea of changes in physical and chemical properties is a fairly new and difficult idea to conquer. I wanted to be sure that I had presented the information in multiple formats to be sure that I had incorporated all learning styles.

We had a video on Friday that was helping us understand the differences between physical and chemical properties and changes. Oh the notes that were taken! The video was quite possibly the cheesiest video out there on the topic, but it used the language closest to our vocabulary and it gave some excellent examples, some that we had experienced in the lab and some that were common enough for the agents to connect to everyday experiences. At the end of the video, I asked for them to share their notes with one another to make sure that they had gotten everything…and they ended up quizzing each other!!!!

And on top of that, one of my blocks who were having a rough time of it completely turned their behavior around this week! In fact they may have been the best class this week!