Growing Sprouts - The neXt Lesson Collaboration with Gr. 12 Students ELP

Growing Sprouts With our Grade 12 Friends

As part of a school board wide intiative to improve lesson planning, our class is part of a 21C project called The neXt Lesson. This initiative aims to improve student learning by pairing with another classroom to:

1. Participate in a project which involves "knowledge construction"    NOT "knowledge reproduction".

2. Solve a "real life" problem.

At a teacher in-service, I had the opportunity to meet a Gr. 12 Nutrition teacher at St. John Paul II named Ms. Mieta. As part of our collaboration, we decided to grow sprouts with the students in my FDK class. Ms. Mieta's class was responsible for beginning the project for us and they set up the sprouting jars.  They also posted videos on "How to Sprout" on YouTube. We came up with some possible inquiry questions around sprouting:

Can we sprout our own food? 

Can we grow other food to eat? 

Can we grow food indoors?

We came up with some possible If/Then statements:

If we grow sprouts in a jar, then we can eat them.
If we grow sprouts, then we can use non-standard units to measure their growth.

This project meets Full-Day Kindergarten Expectations on many levels: (Science/Math/Language:

Math: Measure and compare length, using non-standard units (through measuring how much our sprouts/plants grow)

Science: Demonstrate an understanding of the natural world and the need to care and respect our environment; conduct simple investigations using simple inquiry skills; living and non-living things; make predictions and explorations.

Language: Beginning writing and Oral Language (communicating by asking questions).

It also deals with the real-world problem of growing food for consumption and eating healthy.

As a classroom, we watched Ms. Mieta's class describe how to set up the sprouts and how to care for them when we got them. I also did a knowledge building session on what the children thought about what they watched. 

Part I and II Videos are posted here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuUjGoSZSok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDFMrWOKvbY

When the sprouts were started, Ms. Mieta's Gr. 12's came to visit our classroom to give us the sprouting jars and various materials that we needed.

The Gr. 12 students handed out jars to each student.

Ms. Mieta and her students.

Our sprouts have been watered and set up to grow! 

Our FDK students were responsible for watering the sprouts twice a day and draining the water. We placed the jars on a dish rack sideways for drainage. The students had the opportunity to observe and draw the sprouts as they grew and changed. 

Our Learning Goals were:

1. To measure their sprouts using the snap cubes and tell how many.
2. Show "how many" by colouring the squares on the snap cube paper.
3. Compare their own growth to a friend's to show which has more.

The students watered the sprouts twice a day.

The students observed and tracked the growth of the sprouts.

They used snap-cubes to measure how much they had grown.

They compared their measurements and said which has more. "7 cubes is more than 6!"

"These sprouts have filled the jar to 6 cubes!"

The sprouts grew very large!

They observed the plants over 5 days.

We took some out to have a closer look at plant parts.

On Friday, we took them out of the jar, we tasted them and then we sent them home!

In the next month, we will take our sprouting to the next level.  Ms. Mieta and Mr. Eddy's classes (Gr. 12) will be teaching us about soil and growing indoor vegetables. We have been in touch with Loblaw Foods to see if we can grow some vegetables to take to Loblaws to make a dish to eat.

Fun With Science - Magic Milk Experiment ELP

Magic Milk Experiment - Exploring Science and Colour

A few weeks ago, we decided to add a science experiment to our learning centre activities. Ms. Switzer took the students in small groups to try the "Magic Milk" experiment.

What we used:

- a plate

- 2% milk (enough to cover the bottom of the plate)

- food colouring

- dish soap

- dropper (for the dish soap)

What we did:

1. pour some milk on the plate

2. drop some food colouring in the milk in spots

3. put some dish soap in the dropper

4. drop the soap onto the food colouring spots

5. watch what happens!

  

When you add the soap to the food colouring, a chemical reaction happens causing the colours to spread away from the dishwashing liquid, creating swirls. It actually carried on for quite some time!

Student Observations:

"looks like a star."

"I see fireworks."

"The colours are mixing up."

"The colour runs away."

"The soap chases the colours."

Going to the Doctor - Learning Measurement Through Play ELP

What Does the Doctor Do? - Fun With Measurement

After Christmas, Ms. Switzer and I wanted to change the drama centre so we asked the children what they would be interested in switching it to so we took a survey. The students came up with a list of choices such as: a post office, a vet centre, a hospital/doctor's office and a bakery.  After we asked everyone, the results indicated that we should have a doctor's office/hospital.

As educators, we are usually looking for ways to incorporate student learning into our play so we decided to have a knowledge building session about "what happens at the doctor?" using the "I See, I Think, I Wonder" model. Ms. Switzer took small groups of students to the doctor centre and she asked them what they know about the doctor.  She got many responses:

"I was sick at the hospital"

"He checks how tall you are. It's called measuring."

"The doctor is checking my hearing."

The children also told Ms. Switzer that when they go to the doctor, they get checked, weighed and measured.  We brought in a scale and Ms. Switzer measured and weighed each of the children. Ms. Switzer fastened some measuring sticks to the wall and left it. We began to notice that students were building creations and using the measuring sticks to measure them!