Students learn in many ways and as educators it is our responsibility to provide as many methods and opportunities for students to learn the content. During the 5 E instructional model for science, the Elaborate portion is where I provide student choice with different student led centers.
I have centers based on three levels of expertise for each instructional standard: intensive, on grade level and enhancement.
Students whom need intensive review, I implement resources that keep their attention with tactile resources with a focus on vocabulary and immediate feedback. I shared three of my favorites.
One of my favorites for vocabulary review is printing my vocabulary deck from Quizlet and making dual sided flash cards with the term and definition provided for immediate understanding. Those cards are used with recycled board game maps and students roll a dice and correctly answering a flash card get to move their character across the board. If answered incorrectly, they skip a turn. For increased ownership ask students to provide their own unique game piece or 3D print their own design. Here you can find links to all my 5th grade science decks.
Second is using Jenga. Each box contains 54 boards which I split into two groups of 27 so two pairs of students can use. I numbered the boards 1-27 and I have questions typed up with answers provided on a separate sheet. Students pull a board, look for the corresponding question number and answer the question. Their partner reviews the answers and indicates whether he/she has gotten it correct and trades the question/answer sheet. There isn't a winner regarding the activity, just students pulling boards out of the tower and once it falls, have them rebuild and continue. Here, is an example of one of my 5th grade science Jenga QUESTIONS and ANSWERS.
The third is using Hand2mind Versatiles. A great affordable resource for pairs of students to complete independently. Students answer questions while maneuvering tiles by matching the questions with the correct letters to create a set colored pattern. Students can quickly determine whether the answers are correct by flipping the board and using the viewer to see if their pattern matches the one given. Versatiles comes with different booklets based on many subjects and grade levels and they are easy to create your own as well. Here is an example of one I created for 5th grade science.
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Hi Peter,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy looking at all the great activities you do with your students. Could you please send me the lesson you taught using Makey Makey to review the Water Cycle? If you have a video demonstration that would be great as well.
I'm currently teaching the water cycle and would love to have the students use the Makey Makey Water Cycle activity. Thank you, Sandra Johnson
Sorry for the late response.
ReplyDeleteI do not have an example at the moment however I can hopefully explain what we did so you can use it for any content you are teaching.
We used Makey Makey with Scratch to create an interactive Controller and Computer Program
Students first drew the water cycle and uploaded it or used Google Drawing and uploaded it to Scratch as the primary background.
They coded a program to run for each of the stages of the water cycle with information and visuals, either with text appearing, animation, voice over etc. Whatever they wanted to illustrate.
Each stage was a different button found on the Makey (up, down, left, right). The Space key was used to return to the main page of the water cycle.
Their main image background of the water cycle was printed and taped to cardboard to be used as their controller. Lacing alum. Foil by each stage, the Makey was attached to them to run the program.
Hope that helps