My Grant Mini Project 2010

The purpose of my lesson is to build up conversations in science and allow my students to use and develop a better understanding of science by expressing what they understand and why they learn the way they do.  I want my students to think about how they individually learn so that they can remove some of the misconceptions.  This process will help them to become better learners.  The lesson will begin with the students being given a general science question such as why are leaves green and asked to talk about it with their partner for about 5 minutes and write down what they have learned from each other and then share it with the rest of the class.  Then we will begin to explore what they wrote about through experimentation using their stories to see if their stories  help them understand the general question.  During September, I will be taking them outside to learn about biology and we will be collecting specimens and testing them in the lab. We will focus on how the students develop their stories and through discussion and writing the students will further develop their stories from the general question to more specifically what they still have questions about so they can go back and do further exploration.  They will also be given brain puzzles like we had during the workshop and asked to give feedback about them.  I will also be giving them doodles as warm ups.  Another outcome is to help my students learn better writing skills, because most of them have difficulty putting their thoughts into sentences, we will be able to tie these thoughts together and help them develop the written language through their conversations.  I want them to develop a sense of enpowerment over their own learning.  They will develop journal books of their understanding of their stories to different science questions and we will scan various samples into the forum.  The topics that I will be teaching will span from DNA to cells and the atom.  We will also investigate systems in the environment.  The grant money will be used to buy the binding materials to bind the journal books.  $150.00 and to purchase the lab materials to study the cell and DNA Flinn Scientific lab pack refills $100.00 and to purchase a new printer $ 100.00 to print out their covers and pictures.  No printer is available in our school.  This project will be updated and posted on this web site every month.  The students will keep a personal journal of how they feel about learning through conversation and completing lab activities as they learn new ideas in science.  We will begin this conversation on the first day.