Bent Science Lesson #2

Today Chelsea and I implemented our second lesson at Bent Elementary and it went pretty well. We taught the children about sound and pitch by bringing in glass cups and different objects to hit the glass cup so that we could demonstrate that certain sounds have higher pitch and lower pitch. We used a metal fork, a plastic fork, and a pencil to hit the cup.

The students seemed to really enjoy this lesson and loved that it was hands-on. For the most part all of them seemed to be engaged except for one of the students.  Chelsea and I tried to keep him on task, but all he wanted to do was play with the glass and forks.  We kept re-directing him to help him pay attention, but at times that was not working either.  I felt like Chelsea and I were being distracted by him and I wanted to make sure the other 3 children were getting something out of the lesson.

There were definitely some things I would have changed for the lesson and I plan to when we implement the lesson for the second time in the next few weeks. First of all, although our lesson was hands-on, I felt like our lesson could have been longer. I think next time we should bring more objects to hit the glass with because after 15 minutes our lesson was all based on discussion and I could see that we were losing the kids' attention. We used a recording sheet for the students to use during the activity. We used this as an assessment tool and it gave us the opportunity to see if they were truly comprehending the information that was being learned. We introduced the objects by having them identify each picture on the recording sheet along with the words sound, loud, and soft. So, for next time maybe we could have the students predict was object will make the loudest sound or have them write a sentence or two about the experiment after.

The students did an awesome job understanding the difference between high pitch and low pitch sounds and were able to give us other examples from home or school of high and low pitch sounds. It made me feel like I taught them something and they really comprehended it when they gave examples! This was completely shocking to me. I had no idea that these 2^nd graders would understand the idea of pitch or sound and I was super nervous to go about explaining it to them in a way that they would understand. However, Chelsea did an awesome job explaining what pitch was and gave a very good example of it. I’m not sure I would have been able to teach this lesson if I was by myself, so it’s always nice to have someone by my side to co-teach with just in case I get stuck in mid-thought about something.

Thinking back on my childhood with Science, I do not ever remember learning about pitch and sound until I got into middle school. Even when I was in middle school we never did hands-on activities to learn about pitch and sound, we mostly watched videos and read from a textbook. When I reflect back on Science growing up, I wish I could go back to all my old teachers that taught from a textbook and ask why they chose to teach like this. It makes me sad that the only parts of Science I remember while growing up are the experiments that were hands-on and those are the ideas I can explain thoroughly. When I teach Science I want my students to remember what they learned and be able to go home to their parents and explain the experiment and what they learned from it. Another aspect I want to be able to bring into the classroom is doing experiments from home like the Earth and Space Science Module talked about.  However, having parents help outside of the classroom may be hard, it is an awesome way to get the students excited about Science and give them some academic time with their parents. Before doing this, I would ask all of the parents if they were willing to participate in an activity like this so that we are all on the same page. It would be super beneficial for the students to go home with some experiment type activity and come back with their recordings to discuss in class.

Overall, I really enjoyed teaching this lesson to these students and it is easy to teach when you have students that are so excited to learn. When we go into Bent and walk into that classroom the students are so excited to see us and when we tell them we are doing an experiment they all cheer. That is exactly how I want my future classroom to respond to Science when it is that time of day!

Exceeds:

-Included a picture of recording sheet.

-Exceeded word count

-During our lesson we had the students draw pictures of different sounds that they could think of and then they told us whether the sound was high or low pitch

-Chelsea and I learned how to say different words in Spanish to help make them feel comfortable that we were learning at the same time.