Big Concept and it's Sub-Topics:
Precipitation
- What is it?
- What causes precipitation?
- Types of precipitation.
Relationships that Constitute the Important Dimensions of Understanding
According to the TEKS retrieved from the TEA website, beginning in 2nd grade, students: "explore the processes in the water cycle, including evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, as connected to weather conditions". This being said, inportant relationships involved in precipitation that are important for student's understanding are the water cycle and the processes involved within it (evaporation, condensation, and precipitation). Also in 2nd grade, students "classify matter by physical properties, including shape, relative mass, relative temperature, texture, flexibility, and whether material is a solid or liquid; and compare changes in materials caused by heating and cooling". Prior to learning about precipitation, students need to have an understanding of what heating and cooling does to materials (including liquids) and an idea of the states of matter (solid, liquid, and gas). This will help them to understand the water cycle and to better understand precipitation, where it comes from, and how the different types of precipitation all are created from on common liquid (water).
Topics Not Acquired
If beginning in a 2nd grade science classroom, students would be unaware of any of these relationships since they are a branch of the 2nd grade TEKS. This being said, the teacher should begin with:
- States of Matter (Solid, Liquid, Gas)
- Heating and Cooling of Objects
- Water Cycle
- Breakdown of Precipitation
Best Practice for Teaching these New Concepts
For teaching states of matter, a video like the one from BrainPOP (http://www.kidsgeo.com/geography-for-kids/0100-atmospheric-moisture.php) would help students to understand the concept, as well as showing them video clips of actual objects in the three states of matter. Another interactive multimedia that would be beneficial is a game created through Alice or Scratch where a student "chooses" the solid in the picture. This would allow students to interact with the software and would show their understanding of the material.
For a lesson on heating and cooling of objects and the water cycle, there are also BrainPOP videos(http://www.brainpopjr.com/science/matter/changingstatesofmatter/) that demonstrates the changing states of matter and the water cycle (http://www.brainpopjr.com/science/weather/watercycle/). However, this can best be taught by a video that shows the actual heating and cooling of liquids to demonstrate what happens. This can be done either by finding one on http://www.teachertube.com/, http://www.youtube.com/, or http://www.discoveryeducation.com/ or the teacher can create a video by putting ice cubes into a pot on the stove and heating it until they turn to a liquid (this is best done if you add food coloring before freezing the ice cubes so the color can be seen in later parts), then boiling the water to turn it to water vapor or steam (gas). The teacher can use other materials to show how it can return to a liquid phase and solid, or can end her video here.
Precipitation can be taught in the same manner, through videos. However, a podcast that demonstrates a slideshow of images showing the different relationships while the teacher is narrating would be more beneficial to the students. By showing the students images, the teacher can show them all the types of precipitation, as well as showing an image of the water cycle and describing what is happening (what causes precipitation).
References
BrainPOP, Junior. http://www.brainpopjr.com/
Chapter Six - Atmospheric Moisture (2012). KidsGeo.com. Retrieved from http://www.kidsgeo.com/geography-for-kids/0100-atmospheric-moisture.php
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (2010). Texas Education Agency. Retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch112a.html#112.11
do we need to provide feed back to our peers? We are the only team who has posted anything???
ReplyDeleteYes, I think we still have to discuss this information so that Merriam can provide research after the discussion.
ReplyDeleteYes, your team is awesome!!! Keep up the great work!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you Dr. Shannon!
ReplyDeleteLauren I liked that you were able to describe the complete process of what students are expected to learn in order to understand percipitation. This way we are able to see that some concepts are important and necessary before other big main idea can be applied and analyzed. Your multimedia suggestions were also great!
ReplyDeleteWhat I do find is that most of the times plenty of all these beginner's (elementary) concepts are found either in a video, game, or any other multimedia format, but for more advanced topics they are hard to find. I had a hard time finding videos for the business cycles topic. I know that at the end, we as educators, are the responsible for having such techncology available, yet if there were more options available it would be a lot more easier for us since they do take time to develop.
Thanks Becky, I haven't ever done a lesson on precipitation, so I figured it would be a fun one to look into. I have noticed that there is more of an abundance of online resources for elementary concepts. However, I think this is the fault of teachers. From what I have seen when the EC-6 Generalists and 8-12 educators have come together is that the teachers of the younger grades are more inventive and use more hands-on approaches or visuals. From what I remember in high school, all we ever did was book work or lecture-type lessons to "prepare us for college". It is us, the teachers, that need to develop more online resources for the older grades because I do think they will benefit students greatly! Visuals are always helpful and interactive multimedia as well, no matter what age or level of the concept.
DeleteLauren, I really liked that you decided to go with a Brainpop videos with 2nd graders. They love videos for the input of the new learning material. I would be curious to know what you would use for students to output what they've learned. This concept of solid to liquid to gas is sometimes hard for students to grasp, but even harder is for them to demonstrate that their understanding.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love using BrainPOP! I think it really connects to the students at these age levels and allows them to really grasp the concepts.
DeleteAs far as allowing students to demonstrate what they have learned, a game through Scratch or another game programming interface could be used to allow them to choose if that object is in a state of solid liquid gas. I could also incorporate language arts into this and have them write a how-to paper to demonstrate how a substance (water) goes from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas. Another example would be to have them fill in a drawing of the water cycle. When studying for the TAKS test with my fifth grade bilingual students in student teaching, I had them do this to show me if they understood the water cycle and it seemed to help them (even at that age) to color the drawing and fill in the steps. I simply gave them a word bank and had them fill in the words. It may sound childish, but even fifth graders still like to color and it gave them a little bit of time to be creative. :)