Have you ever wondered how food gets from your mouth and then back out? Well, this is what I tried to teach in my interest approach lab. I found this really cool idea to use stocking, water, a banana and a piece of graham cracker. You smash all of the food up and some water in a bag and then cut a whole in the bag and squeeze the food through to the stockings, then a whole from one stocking to another. This is all to represent food passing. While passing the food through you are to ask students about what is happening to the food and how it is being asborded. Sounds messy I know.
I tried this lab out at home with my 7 year old sister and she loved it. It was not as gross as I thought it would be. However, when I did it in class it was a mess. I had one student say that he did not want help due to the mess.
Looking back on how I taught the interest approach I see that there are things that I need to change. I should have gone into more detail about each section and maybe slowed down some to see if the students were understanding it.
Some things that I thought that I did good was catching the students interest and keeping them involved. I had each student (that wanted to) do a part of the pushing the food through.
Overall I am planning on using this in my digestive system unit.
Lets see how next week goes.
Val,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you had a good idea and prepared for your presentation. However, it sound that may be you need to work on pulling all your students in even if they don't want to peripatetic.
Hey Val, I would be interested to see this! Looks like you could probably do something cool like this with ruminant digestion, like 4 different types of compartments for the food to squeeze through and a different process for each one?! I like that your reflection involved a practical aspect - messiness! We don't often think of things like cleanliness when teaching, but it is an important aspect, one that may even affect our learning environments if the students are bothered by messiness. Cool reflection! Looking forward to more!
ReplyDeleteVal,
ReplyDeleteI like that you practiced your interest approach with your sister! It is always good to try something out first before coming in and winging it! I think that this is a great demonstration to capture the kids interest. I do agree with Jessie in saying that it would be beneficial to pull every student in. Maybe have the students who don't like the mess do something else, such as capture the comments about what is happening on the board? Overall, great reflection, and a very neat interest approach!