Redemption!

Made great progress with the Animal Adaptations class in the last two weeks. Took it to 2 schools, a total of 6 classrooms, grades 2 to 6. And it was a hit in every one. The students loved the chance to pretend to be birds. The teachers loved how excited their students were. And, here's the kicker, they learned something!

Evolution of the class:
Not much has changed since the first time. The one change was that there was no hands-on activity in day one. It was all thinking and discussion. The eating-like-birds gets a bit old after two days, so a third day seemed unnecessary. They get the chance to "observe" the tools and foods in day 2, before making their hypothesis, but I focus more on teaching them the vocabulary of Adaptations on day 1.

So we start by having them pick an animal they know really well. Preferably not a pet-like animal (no dogs, cats, etc) so that we can focus on their natural adaptations, not the adaptations they've made to live with humans. Or, more specifically, the adaptations we've bred them for.

We then list characteristics of the animal and of the habitat that the animal lives in. After we fill the board up with as many things as we can think of, we talk about how the characteristics listed on the left help the animal survive in the habitat. What helps the animal catch the food and eat it? What helps the animal stay warm (or cool)? What do they do, how do they do it? Is that how all animals that live in that habitat survive?

When I'm lucky, which I was in the first classroom, the animal they pick is a bird and the transition to adaptations of birds is smooth. When I'm less lucky, and the animal is a dolphin, I need to make the transition to get them thinking about birds: an animal they don't generally think about often. I found, after some hits and misses, that the way to do it was with different ways that animals move to hunt their food or run from predators. They can run, swim, dig, or fly. Then we can talk about the adaptations of animals that fly, birds. With their example animal, I write down anything they say, relevant or not. With the birds, now that they understand what an adaptation is, they need to tell me what the characteristic is and how it is an adaptation. Does it help them fly, why do they need to fly? Does it help them hide, why do they need to hide?

When the concept map is drawn, we can look at the 7 pictures of birds, and focus on the most important adaptation: the beak.

This conversation kept every student interested in every classroom for the entire hour. I was shocked. And thrilled.

WoW = Science Inquiry?

I love this:

...What is science? It's a technique for uncovering the hidden rules that govern the world. And videogames are simulated worlds that kids are constantly trying to master. Lineage and World of Warcraft aren't "real" world, of course, but they are consistent -- the behavior of the environment and the creatures in it are governed by hidden and generally unchanging rules, encoded by the game designers. In the process of learning a game, gamers try to deduce those rules.<

This leads them, without them even realizing it, to the scientific method.

- Clive Thompson, "Games Without Frontiers" Wired.com September 9, 2008

The article goes on to discuss the findings of Constance Steinkuehler, a game academic at the University of Wisconsin, who studied almost 2,000 messages posted on a World of Warcraft discussion board. She found that a majority of these messages were analyzing the game, with posters going back and forth positing hypotheses and responding with experience-based rebuttals - the marks of good science inquiry.

Indeed, the conversations often had the precise flow of a scientific salon, or even a journal series: Someone would pose a question -- like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster -- and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out. - Thompson, "Games Without Frontiers"

In the classroom, it's difficult to inspire student-driven inquiry. How do you get them to ask their own questions and seek out their own research to answer it? We can see that teens will use this method on their own, and do to play games - shouldn't we be able to get that same behavior to test gravity, momentum, chemical reactions, etc? They don't realize they're doing it when the goal is to win the game. How do we get them to try it in the classroom?