Adapting the Animal Adaptations Class

I taught my Animal Adaptations class (bird beaks) a few weeks ago for 4th graders, and last week for 2nd/3rd. I thought it went well. Two or three of the 7 teachers commented on how interactive it was and that the activity was fun and appropriate. Then I got back the evaluations and found out it "wasn't scientific enough," that the "emphasis seemed to be on competition, not scientific methods," and that they don't believe "it would be valuable to repeat next year."

The summary of the lesson plan is pretty simple: take a bunch of household tools, simplified "bird foods" (i.e. seeds, dried beans or peas to stand in for 'bugs,' pieces of rubber bands mixed in with shredded paper to stand in for 'worms,' etc) and have them test the beaks for successful eating. The inquiry question they're basically answering is: if seeds were the only available food, would a bird who's beak is more like a toucan (fruit-eating) or more like a grosbeak (seed-eating) survive? It requires being a bit competitive - put the food in the center of the table, have two students with different tools see who can catch and 'eat' the most in 1 minute. They first, of course, write out their experimental design and then collect the data during the experiment. It seems like inquiry to me - ask a question, plan a method for finding an answer, use data to support your answer.

What went wrong?

Things to improve on the next time I teach it:

• In general - my description of how to design an experiment (using variables, setting up a control group, etc) has been lacking this year. I just hadn't remembered to incorporate all the details into the general lecture that introduces that section of the class. So, I have to remember to bring that back in to satisfy the "not enough focus on inquiry" people. I had hoped to allow more self-directed discovery of the best methods, not force-feed it. Oh, well.
  
• I had done two-students-at-a-time to speed up the data collection (and, honestly, to make it more fun - the competition increased their focus for the most part; if your classroom can't behave and gets too competitive, step in and break up the groups that aren't working). I will need to ponder the options for either (1) explaining more fully that the reason for it is to demonstrate adaptation and survival in competition, or (2) removing that aspect and providing two bowls or having them go one-at-a-time.
• Having time before the scheduled class time to set up stations, thus allowing them to experiment with a wider range of foods and in a more inquiry-focused way. I'd like them to have the chance to discover on their own which tool is associated with which food and which bird. And that's how I wrote the class. It just turned out that in practice, when time was a major issue, it was faster to say, "okay, here's a toucan, what do you think he eats?" and then show them the tongs and say, "these are a good tool for picking up big fruits."
• Then, I need to improve the pre- and post- lesson communication with classroom teachers. One of the problems at this school was that the secretary had done all of the scheduling and I had (apparently incorrectly) assumed that she was communicating a lot of information to the classroom teachers. Somewhere, the communication broke down and the teachers seemed unaware (especially the 2nd/3rd grades) of what the program was about.
  

This is fine, though, because it feeds in well to something I want to do anyway. I want to build a wiki that provides more information about the class, and allows participating teachers an opportunity to discuss pros and cons, ways they expanded on the lesson, how they worked together with me to improve the overall experience for their kids, etc. I think that will help those teachers who aren't familiar with the program, or are looking for a different topic then they did in previous years, to have more of an idea of how they'll incorporate it into the class before I get there.

Mostly, I'm sad that this class was so poorly received. Yes, I wish I had more money, more supplies, and more time so that they could get more hands-on activities. But I get 5 hours, over 4 days, to show your kids how to "think like a scientist" and I need to keep it interesting, get their work samples done, and do my best to provide the opportunity for them to 'exceed the standards.' You know it's hard - it's why you have me come in. Why do you make it harder?