Thought-provoking Science Lessons for Elementary School

Attention, teachers of budding scientists! There are a couple of new resources in Thinkipedia that could help students think like a scientist (Lesson Plan) and explore the concept of change (Lesson Plan).

The concept of change is a tricky one. I watched a Head Start teacher talk about it with her kids last week. Over the last several weeks, they watched tadpoles turn into frogs and caterpillars turn into chrysalises. The teacher did the first part of this lesson, which asks the question "To change, what do these things need?"
Because they had watched these changes happen, the kids had no trouble connecting tadpole and frog, caterpillar and chrysalis, seed and plant.But they did have trouble describing the things that make up that relationship of change. They initially struggled to define change or explain what happened between tadpole and frog.

The teacher asked questions like "Did the tadpole change into a frog overnight?" and "What do we do for the tadpoles every day?" She used gesture effectively, pointing at the empty ThinkBlock between the tadpole and frog. With adequate wait time, students came up with things that the tadpole needed in order to change.
This teacher did a phenomenal job of incorporating ThinkBlocks into the lesson. She used realia (the real thing) whenever possible. But when it came time to talk about the idea of change, she used a ThinkBlock to represent it. Her kids were able to handle change, move it around, look inside to see its parts, and find other places where it could fit in their classroom.
The kids talked about how they had changed over time from "in mommy's belly" to "I couldn't walk" to the present.

The payoff? As her kids recently watched the butterflies emerge from their chrysalises, they ecstatically yelled that "IT IS CHANGING! IT IS CHANGING!" with a very rich understanding of this concept that's so critical to thinking scientifically.

After these Head Start students learned about change in one domain, they transferred that idea to a completely new situation. Not sure what transfer is or why it's so important? Check out this recent post.