5th GRADE SCIENCE LESSON
David Burrell, Central Riverside Elementary

Review – An effective technique for connecting today’s lesson with previous learning is to review the content from previous lessons. Oral questions and answers activate this prior knowledge.

Wait time – Some children just need a little time to think after the teacher asks them a question. Processing information involves multiple cognitive functioning all at the same time. Most teachers only wait 1.5 seconds after they ask a question before moving on to another student, but waiting a good 3 seconds produces many more positive responses.

Cooperative group work – Reviewing a concept and then asking students to get together in groups to apply the concept is a way of synthesizing the information and giving a student who may not understand all the nuances of the concept a comfortable place for discussion and clarification. In this case students are asked to work together on a brochure of an energy-efficient town sharing renewable and non-renewable resources. Examples of the completed brochures are shown below.

Proximity control - As a teacher is asking questions in a large group discussion or as the students are working in small groups, walking around the room keeps children on their toes. The close proximity of the teacher keeps children engaged.

Organizing discussion for visual learners - Children learn in different ways. Many children learn auditorially and can listen and take part in oral conversations as a way to organize and synthesize information. For others, they need a visual representation of the discussion to organize the information in their mind. This can easily be done as the teacher writes the information that is shared in a discussion on the board with illustrations or in columns and bullets as points are made.