Teaching

Actually teaching the 4th graders was the best part of the Biosite experience. When they first arrived we greeted them and brought them over to our area. We then did an introduction and icebreaker. We asked them their name, their favorite food, and what they know about compost. After that, we gave them a brief explanation on what compost actually is and how it affects them. Then we starting digging through the compost looking for bugs. Our group mainly found white worms and centipedes. After 7 minutes of looking for bugs we then worked on the trash timeline. We handed out cards and asked them to get in a line based upon how long they think it will take for their item to decompose. We would then tell them how long it takes for their item to decompose and they would go and get in the correct order. The last thing they did was say 1 thing new that they learned about compost. That was the end of the first day. We did a lot of things good but definitely had room to improve. The biggest thing we had to improve was make sure everyone was involved in the trash timeline. After we would tell kids how long it takes for their item to decompose they would go where they were suppose to but not pay attention. That is why on the 2nd day we had everyone involved in the conversation. This seemed to work very well as nobody lost interest and lolly gagged. The second thing that we improved was time management. We made a minute to minute schedule on how much time we would spend on each activity. This also made our teaching more effective because we were able to get to every activity and ensure that the students had enough time.