I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.
Comments
Eve
Thank you for posting this.
CatBells - The sections I had were Evaporation, Condensation, Percipitation, Runoff, Groundwater and the last section was the Sun. My idea was to have students tell me about each and then draw a picture of it. I taught my students a cute song about the water cycle to the tune of "My Darling Clementine". I posted it at www.teachertube.com. You think it would be easy to type in Water Cycle Song and have it come up but there are 52 pages that pop up. What I would do is in the search bar put mrsheatonsclass and then search for member on the drop down menu. When the search is finished you will see a box with my info. Click on the box under my name on the left hand side (that will pull up my video shelf). The first video you will see is the last one I posted (I have 14 posted all together). On the right hand side under that video click on "See all Videos" and every video should pop up. Since the water cycle song was the first video I posted it is at the very bottom.
Weather
- Water Cycle (shown in video)
- Severe Weather Explaination and Safety Tips
- Weather Instruments
Space
- Phases of the moon (suggested by Mrs. Howard)
- Planet Mini Report
Organisim and their Environment
- Animal Mini Report
- Types of Habitats
- Vertebrates/Invertebrates
Light and Electricity
- All about Magnets
- All about Light
Inquiry
- Explain and Illustrate the scientific method
I'm sure there is more applicability but those were what I came up with on the fly.
I am going to be teaching ELA this year, as well as science, and there is a lot you can do in that field with this book as well.
Eve
I will use this groovy foldable in science next week. Thanks for the great idea.
Carolyn Matzinger Central Elementary School Petoskey, MI
Eve