A Lesson for All - Freezing and Melting

     

After our second lesson on changes with our third grade students I can't help but wonder, are we giving the lesson or learning the lesson?  I feel like I am learning so many valuable lessons in this process.  It is truly amazing that I can give so much to these students in science knowledge all the while they are giving me valuable lessons in teaching.  It is definitely a learning experience!  I began today's lesson in a small panic because the teacher had done a review of last weeks lesson with the students while my teaching partner Debi and I prepared the materials for this lesson.  This meant I had to think quick and pose an introduction to this lesson on the spot.  I started by asking the students for properties of solids and liquids and we made a chart on the board of their answers.  I was very pleasantly surprised by how much information the students had retained from last weeks lesson.  We then asked them to recall how we ended our lesson the week before.  Their hands shot up and they all remembered pouring water into and ice cube tray and putting that ice cube tray in the freezer.  The students had predicted that the water would turn to ice over the course of the week in the freezer... and use enough their predictions were accurate and our second lesson kicked off on a good note.  We discussed how the water froze because heat was removed, and in today's lesson we would be trying to return the ice to its liquid state.  We tried not to give away any information of how the students would do this because we wanted them to think of creative ways to melt their ice with their partner.  After our lesson introduction which covered everything we had discussed about the properties of solids and liquids and how we would be working with a solid and changing its state to a liquid, we reviewed our science lab safety rules.  Again we talked about using our senses to make observations in our science lessons.  We reviewed the wafting technique for smelling and reminded the students that we will never be using our sense of taste during our science experiments.   We then talked with the students about being careful with their bags of ice and make sure they melt their ice cube without tearing, ripping or opening the bag.

Like last week we assigned each student in the pair a role: one student was the recorder and the other student was the materials gatherer.  Debi and I found that this method works really well and eases the traffic flow around the materials table and gives each student an equal part in the science lesson.  Once they gathered their materials and we recorded our start time, the students were off on their melting experiment.

I was very impressed with the students efforts and varied methods in melting their ice cube.  I saw the students trying many different ways to melt their ice.  They were holding tight to the bag, sitting on the bag, wrapping the bag in their sweatshirts and even crushing their ice cubes.  The students understood very quickly that adding heat to the ice cube would turn it back into a liquid.  They got more and more excited the closer their ice was to completely melted.  This lesson was a bit challenging because some of the students had a hard time making sure their bags didn't break and were not showing as much care as was asked of them at the beginning of our lesson.  Some bags ripped open and a few spills happened throughout the lesson.  I think in future lessons we need to be more proactive in stopping the students when their experiments are getting off track or they are not listening to the rules of the experiment.  Overall however, the students were able to melt their ice and had fun in the process.  This experiment was in line with the state frameworks for the third grade which asks students to describe how water can be changed from one state to another by adding or taking away heat.    

  While groups were finishing up Debi and I had word search puzzles for our students to complete.  This proved to be a good activity for students who finished their lesson early.  After the students finished we discussed their different methods in melting their ice and what they needed to do to melt the ice as fast as possible.  Again the students showed much knowledge by sharing with us that heat needed to be applied to the ice to get it to melt.  Mission accomplished!!    

                          For our next lesson Debi and I need to focus on the students process skills and make sure they are aware of the skills they are using in these science experiments.  We also need to make sure they are aware that they are answering important science questions in doing these experiments.  

Our lessons have gone very well so far and have been a remarkable learning experience and we look forward to sharpening our class management skills and strengthening our instructional directions to our students.  

Stay tuned for next week...MIXTURES!!!