Exploring Our Fluid Earth

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.

The really cool thing, though was that my kids weren't as dysfunctional as we were in our PD workshop. They started one side of the room, all on their own and went in the same direction. Some started on the other end. But they were all straight and were parallel to each other. They looked at me like I was crazy when I asked them why they organized themselves that way. In their words: "Because, this made sense.... it was easier. Why? What do you think we should do?"

They also chose to do the % cover... which I thought they'd avoid because the math is harder. But, *shrug* they seemed to think that that would give them the most information about what's in the area. A few wanted to do quadrat intercept. I told them all to do the same one, but next time i do this activity, I'll let them pick the sampling techniques they want to do and compare that way.. should be good to really see the differences between the methods.