Exploring Our Fluid Earth

Thanks for the reminders of how this lesson is done. I'm worried I'll forget before I have a chance to do the lesson.
I too plan to use the pizza pics activity to perk their interest.
If you do this one as your PowerPoint presentation I'll get a chance to find out how you weaved some of your targeted biology topics (e.g. biotic & abiotic environmental factors, population dynamics) into this lesson.

Is my computer going wacky? Your pic has you as "Jolene" and your lesson plan says Joanna Lee.

The pizza activity was a great introduction to sampling. Pizza boxes are free however making an enlarged copy of the pizza is not. Nevertheless, students thought I really had a pizza to share. I wish I waited to do this lesson a little later when the students had a better idea of biotic and abiotic factors. I was able to reference organisms in different environments besides the ocean so students would understand that the pizza pieces and the M&M candies were simply models for this sampling lesson. Your computer is fine as Jolene and I are one and the same.

Thanks for posting! I totally forgot what we did in class for this activity- just remembered eating them =)

Just a question but did you have to send a letter home because they were doing a lab with chocolate- in case of allergies?? I dont think any of my kids are allergic to peanuts (even though our bag is just chocolate m&ms) but didn't know if that was something we had to do.

I did not send a letter home in regards to distributing chocolate. All schools are different with "positive rewards" and I have used other forms of inexpensive treats since it so motivating. Overall my students have not had that many allergies and at this age, they know what they can or cannot consume. I am aware of those students who do have restrictions because they are listed on a confidential health list.

Hey Joanna, thanks for the reminder the other day!!! So where did you get the free pizza box? How about the enlarged color print of the pizza? I'm so out of ink I can barely even print black and white. I was thinking about just cutting up the little one in our TSI binder. I wish color pizza was one of the supplies we got in the bag... Did you go to Kinko's?

You are free to use my pizza box and my cut pieces of pizza. I made an exact size copy of the colored example that was included in the binder . Enlarging it would cost over $7.00 so that wasn't an option. I will send over the pizza box to you. I will need to run another sampling design lesson for the incoming students who switched in. Do you think I could use prebagged mini samples of M & M candies or is that really NOT random sampling?

Thanks!!! The box, apron and cut up pieces are a big help!! I laminated your pieces so they don't get messed up since some were looking little curly. Smaller sets does seem like an option - maybe the regular individual sized bags? Termite project gives me preset cups of 50 beans when we do population estimates. At the end of the lesson kids check their percents by counting EVERY bean wihich is more doable with 50.... I would wonder if you could mirror the M&M percent values well enough with bags you set up yourself. I might go Walmart and get small bags.... money again though...

Thank you for returning the pizza box, apron and LAMINATED pizza samples. Some were curly because it took so long to go around the class for distribution that the student who got the first samples got tired of waiting and starting playing origami with it. I researched the cost of regular individual sized M&M bags and found they were pricey too at the big box store. For this year, I will use the mini bags and total the number after all the bags are counted by students. Good idea about using beans. I think investing in different types of beans to represent different M&M colors is doable, then use the beans for my plant unit later.....money again.