What a fun afternoon I had. Today we discovered the physical properties of texture and smell. The students had a great time using playdough to take a closer look at the textures and using their smell to understand their rock collections better (just like real geologists do!)
This lesson had a lot of fun activities throughout, so class management was my top priority to keep students on track, having fun while ensuring learning was happening. I loved the challenge and think that I handled it well. One thing that I messed up a little bit on was that I had students place their rocks in playdough to observe the textures…. and then had them smell the rocks.. OOPS! I had a good laugh as the students told me “but Ms Finlay, the only thing we smell is playdough!”. This was not a huge mistake, but I definitely would have students smell their rocks before placing them in playdough if I were to teach this in the future.
My Co op teacher provided great feedback, and asked how I will ensure students understand the meaning of physical properties. I was happy that she had brought this up because I have an assessment in mind, but was planning on doing it next week. After my co op teacher brought up this topic, I now would like to provide students with a quick assessment at the beginning of next science class as a review and check in, before moving on to test rocks and minerals.
Overall I was happy with todays discussion during pre/post conference as well as the lesson itself and I look forward to next class!
Please see the attachment below for my lesson and co op feedback!