The lesson that I taught was originally designed for the six thru eighth grade classroom. The lesson is designed to be a part of a unit lesson on earthquakes. I decided to do a lesson on earthquake safe structures. The lesson lasted 55 minutes and also required student to journal a reflection of what they learned from the lesson. The lesson started with a brief introduction to what we were going to cover in the lesson and why it was important. One way to ensure that students get an appreciation of current technology, is to introduce the before and after pictures of an earthquake. In order to complete this objective, students were given a pre-writing activity that asked students to look at a scene and draw or write a short paragraph describing what the picture would look like after a major earthquake. Students were given about five to ten minutes to complete the pre-writing assignment. As the students were writing I observed and checked on each student’s progress. After completing the pre-write activity students were asked to share their drawings or descriptions with the group. One student mentioned that the drawing would have broken buildings, trees, and bridges. Another student stated that there would be cracks in the ground. In addition to the comments given, many of the students drew pictures of building with major structural damage.
In the next phrase of the lesson I read a copy of the book Earthquakes (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science)” by Frakly M. Branley. Reading and hearing about earthquakes may make students believe that nothings can be done to lessen the destruction and death caused by earthquakes. To introduce the concept of earthquake-resistant buildings, students were allowed to watch a short clip from the YouTube site entitled “Nationwide Effort to Make Buildings Earthquake Safe “. After students watched the video I pause the lesson and talked about what was happening on the video, I asked students questions to help them extract more detail from the video segment. I then introduced the main activity and began giving students instructions for the lab.
Furthermore, the materials needed for this lesson are items that you can find in any grocery or convenience store. Students were given spaghetti, toothpicks, marshmallows (miniature), Jell-O and paper to sketch drawings on. (I notice that I forgot toothpicks and substituted spaghetti) Students were instructed to build two spaghetti buildings. I also modified the lesson to help my student with the IEP. I provide a piece of paper illustrating how to build structures with marshmallows and toothpick obtained from teachervision.com. In addition, I demonstrated to students how to make cubes and triangles using spaghetti and marshmallows. I also instructed student on how cubes and triangles can be stacked. Students were allowed to work in groups of two. Students were asked to sketch a picture of their structure before starting the lab. Students were allowed to work freely while I stood back and observed.
Student learning and understanding during the implementation of the lesson seem quite good. During the lesson objective one and three were met were student understood that earthquakes are natural disasters that can cause damage and that the structure of a building could affect how much destruction is caused by an earthquake. As I moved among the different groups I noticed that my IEP student was losing focus and needed to redirect by his partner several times. To help with this situation I suggested that she allow him to make the different sized spaghetti and pass them to her as she needed them. This seemed to give him direction and a since of purpose.
It was interesting to see how each group approached the design of their structure. One group of girls decided to build a triangle structure. Other groups decided to build structures with triangles and cubes. I could see that student understood the objective of the lab by the way they discussed and sketched out their design. The visual representation of the structures was another sign of student comprehension. All of the structures survived the stimulate earthquake.
After reviewing the lesson and student samples I was able to see that student needed a little more direction on what causes an earthquake. Most of the students are still not sure what an earthquake is. Based on my own reading I know that“earthquakes are the result of sudden release of energy from stress on rocks beneath Earth’s surface” (Tillery, Enger, & Ross, 2008, p. 361). And Seismic wave results from the movement of rocks in different positions. One major misconception that student made was that earthquakes were caused by fault lines. The lesson needs to be modified to show that most earthquake occur along a fault line near the Earth’s surface” (Tillery, Enger, & Ross, 2008, p. 361).
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would make some modifications. The first modification I would make would be to include an on line lab stimulation of how earthquakes waves are created. Another modification would be to allow students to constructed buildings using materials that they choose. I could provide several different options and allow the student to choice their own materials and design. One major modification I would make to the lesson is reading book Earthquakes (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science). Instead, I would provide students the opportunity to research earthquake histories prior to doing the lab. Student could then fill out a comparison chart for the most destructive earthquakes in earth’s history. In addition I would make sure that student really understand what causes seismic waves. However, I still believe that a great way to introduce students to earthquake-resistant buildings is to have them build their own structures. “The more senses that are involved in the learning experience, the more stimuli have a chance of reaching long-term memory” (Know Yourself, p. 37).
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