Exploring Our Fluid Earth

i hope this one works, just got to try

Fun lesson

e.g. I am wondering how to...

e.g. I am wondering how to...

treated the M&M's like marine organisms for study. Kept it suspenseful for the students. They had no idea what they were about to do.

I remember doing this activity in class and taking plenty of pictures, but I hope I will be able to convey the various types of sampling to my students effectively enough for them to understand the difference.

I think my students will like coming in and seeing our classroom transform with everything set up next week. :)

I was pretty nervous about doing this activity at first because I was pretty new to the concept of sampling. After looking at other people's lessons and their ideas, I felt a lot more comfortable with setting up my own lesson.

I have taught day 1 for this lesson, and I started with a "Free Sample" sign posted on my desk with bite size candy pieces on plates. This grabbed the attention of my students and they were curious as to what we were doing today. Tomorrow I will be doing the actual M&M sampling, so keep your fingers crossed for me. :)

Hi everyone,

I choose to reteach the three different types of rocks and the rock cycle using the TSI phases, modes, and planning.

This was a great activity. I think next time I would put more "organisms" on the fake reef to engage students more and get better results. I had too few "organisms" and so groups recorded a lot of substrate for the points.

Kids loved this one too! My challenge was finding a place on campus to set this up, because with lab stations, multiple preps and 30 kids in a room there was no left over space for a mock environment. It does help to have a space with the environment and projection capacity so that the data sheets can be discussed before students begin the aciviy. Because I didn't have this, I made copies of the data sheet examples and we discussed before kids went to work. Also, I broke students up into pairs and ran 8 groups on the site at a time.

This lesson was very fun for my students, despite the fact that we had to go outside to eat the M&Ms (very strict Lab Safety Rules in my classroom). The students were especially interested in the fact that I shared with them about how there weren't always blue M&Ms. There are cute videos on YouTube with the ads from TV back then! We were able to finish the lesson with the optional pizza intro in two 45 minute class periods. The class that chose to sample 20 M&Ms per group came much closer to the actual values than the class that sampled only 10 M&Ms.

I connected this to looking for things in space. I told the kids that we need to preserve the alien specimens, so we can't touch the organisms... because we all saw what happened in Alien, and I don't want a face hugger or a chest-burster in my room.

The kids laughed and seemed to get the idea that they shouldn't touch the 'specimens' too much.

My kids had fun but LOVED the spoons a little too much which distracted them from getting the activity done on time! I don't know why they were so fascinated with the spoons but they all took the spoons home and said they had soup with it =)

I enjoyed doing this lesson with the kids. It is a great way to introduce sampling methods and integrate the demeanors of scientists. My kids were very engaged due to the pizza intro and the M&M's - which helped them focus on the math part. With 6th graders, I found it much easier to steer them towards a sample size of 10 so that the math part would be easier. It might be fun to do it again and use a different sample size once they have the idea down.

I am hoping we have enough time for this lesson to complete the procedure and then allow students to collect data along the transect line with the quadrats at different measurements. If I place the items on the 'sand' as I want to, they should be able to see how sampling techniques can result in varied data collection.

Here's my lesson plan for the Sampling Design activity.

e.g. I am wondering how to...

e.g. I am wondering how to...

Was worried about the aspect of 'human error' via disappearing the small colored objects before the finish of the activity. I was happily suprised that they kept their data as error free as possible. I do recommend a few things: don't save the M&M's long, mine were kind of melted and cracked. I made the class record continue onto the back page with one spot per student. Keep organized with the counting because my activity took 2 days and I let them eat their candy at the end of day 1 which meant I couldn't do the raw data table I made with them. May do a re-do to fit it in.

Was worried about the aspect of 'human error' via disappearing the small colored objects before the finish of the activity. I was happily suprised that they kept their data as error free as possible. I do recommend a few things: don't save the M&M's long, mine were kind of melted and cracked. I made the class record continue onto the back page with one spot per student. Keep organized with the counting because my activity took 2 days and I let them eat their candy at the end of day 1 which meant I couldn't do the raw data table I made with them. May do a re-do to fit it in.