Introducing Lab Notebooks and Skittles

 Another busy week that ended with a Friday in State College for a cohort check in and mock interviews is complete. I think it was week 5, which means we are 1/3  of the way done student teaching and that is simply insane. This week I finished my first unit in animal science, picked up my intro to ag class, started transplanting in the greenhouse, got a temporary class pet and a whole lot of things in between. I do feel like as we are going the weeks continue to get busier and busier and I feel like they will be like that until April, but I am enjoying it. 

As I said I picked up my intro to ag class this week, which is a lot of freshman. My CT and I always joke that they are the breakfast club, because they are quite the bunch, but I enjoyed taking over that class this week. In that class, I decided to try out the interactive lab notebook we learned about during the Inquiry Institute. I am a little nervous, but very excited to see how it will work. I had them create their lab notebooks and then I was excited to dive into a skittle taste test lab that I figured would take a day maybe a day and a half and we spent two days on it and we are still not done, which is all okay, but it made me realize this class is going to move a little slower especially going from a 96 minute block of animal science to 46 minute block of intro.

During this lab the students were blindfolded and tasted skittles to see if they could guess the flavor right and then they did the same thing again and but with their nose pinched in order to determine if sight and smell affect taste. I used this as the opener to our food science class and my students all truly enjoyed it. Another thing which took a little bit of time was that I had students write their own hypothesis and make a data table as a class instead of just give them information. While that did take time I think it was well worth it and I hope I can continue to facilitate learning this way in class. 

My students have been really awesome so far and I am excited to continue try new things and learn with them. I am also interested to see what it will be like to come back after being gone a day and how I can transition from that, but I am excited for another week!





Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 14, 2022 at 1:57 PM

    Lacey,
    Thanks for the update. I would like to hear more about the "actual" results of the Skittles lab, as it was great to see you set that up on Wednesday. I wish I could have been there to see it all of the way through. In any case, keep up the great work and engaging your students in great learning experiences!

    -Dr. Ewing

    P.S. - Make sure to update me (others on the Blog) about your experience of returning to the classroom after having a "sub" on Friday :-)

    ReplyDelete

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