Exploring Our Fluid Earth

My students loved the M&Ms! We had a great discussion about bias and how random is random?

This is a good activity if you have the space to set up the mock field study site and can leave it up for a few days to return to on a second day. It needs to be a large enough area so that 26 students working in 6 groups can move about and work together. It is a good way to teach some environmental sampling techniques before you go out into the field. I marked down one water drop because my students needed more guidance in planning how to collect data and making decisions.

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

We did this in our class and it became four day investigation. I planned it only taking 2 days. We had fun though and it created interesting opportunity to examine data collection, statistics and graphs, both in the creation of and understanding the misconceptions of.
Of course everyone enjoyed the samples after they were collected and recorded.
Worked well with both Math and Science.

Uploading Lesson plan

Uploading Lesson plan

This is the lesson plan.

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the m & m's on the first day, as i switched the parts around, and then when the students entered the second day, our day of review and discussion, they met a dressed up baker looking teacher, which really got them going....fun fun fun

i have wanted to get outside, this activity is a good first step

Here is my TSI lesson plan on a moth hunt activity I'm doing this week in class.

I was initially skeptical setting up a mock tide pool in my classroom for students to practice their transect and quadrat skills. I found that it was a great lesson to model scientific practice, acquire data, and display data in various ways. I did notice that students that were not finding many organisms along their transect lines or within their quadrats were discouraged and disappointed. Although this is a good teaching point, I recommend using plenty of organisms to keep everyone excited about their results.

Kids had a great time and at same time they were learning.
Only one or two students needed prompting to participate.
I did the activity outside and used large blue tarps to simulate a tide pool.

Kids had a great time and at same time they were learning.
Only one or two students needed prompting to participate.
I did the activity outside and used large blue tarps to simulate a tide pool.

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

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

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

Attached are the TSI lesson plan and associated lab write up. Feel free to check it out, critique and modify the write up to fit your needs.

Attached are the TSI lesson plan and associated lab write up. Feel free to check it out, critique and modify the write up to fit your needs.