When the long-anticipated teaching day finally arrived, my team
and I were feeling a mixture of both excitement and nerves. We knew that
we were well-prepared, but it’s still pretty intimidating knowing that
you are the only ones in charge of these kids and that everything you
say will have an impact on them. Despite the fact that we had all done this once before, the butterflies were still very present. When we saw all of the kids walking in,
we took a big deep breath, held up our team number so they could find
us, and waited for our big moment. Our ten kids eventually found their
way to us and we began by sitting them down in our designated spot. We
introduced ourselves and got to know their names and a little bit about
their prior knowledge by using a fun name game. We had the kids tell us their names and either something they already knew about worms, or something they were excited to learn about them. We proceeded to explain all the activities
we were going to do with them, and then we got right into it. Next, it
was time for our worm anatomy activity. I had made a big poster with an unlabeled diagram of a worm on it. I also had note cards with the various worm parts on them. This was the part of the lesson that I was leading, so I passed out the note cards to the kids, put the poster down in front of them, and told them to work together to figure out which card corresponded to the different body parts. Throughout the activity, I asked them why they were putting the cards in specific places and helped them communicate positively with one another. I really felt like we had succeeded
in making learning fun for them. After that, all that was left was to bring out the worms and observe/interact with them. We divided the students into 3 small groups so that my teammates, Abbie and Stephanie, and myself could each be in charge of one group. Each group got a tray full of soil that contained many worms, worm castings, and even some other organisms. We showed the kids how to gently pick up the worms and asked them if they could recognize any of the anatomy they had identified earlier on these real worms...and they could! During their time with the worms, we also told them some interesting worm facts as well as asked them thought-provoking questions. After our
time in the coop, it was sadly time to say goodbye to that group of 4th
graders and hello to the next. We taught our lesson to three groups of
kids, gaining confidence and improving each time. Overall, the
experience was incredible and very eye-opening. I realized that I really
enjoy working with kids, and I feel like I now have a lot of tools in
my belt to do something like this again in the future. I am very
grateful for my time spent in BioSite.
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