Word of the Week -1/10/2011

The word of the week this week is:

Wait for it......

Can you guess?

Are you on the edge of your seat?

 anticipate !

Anticipate means to give advance thought to, await, hope or watch for.

I think this might be a great word to use during reading....what things can students anticipate before reading the whole story?  Are there things they look forward to in their own lives?  What happens when we anticipate something and it does not turn out the way we had expected?   

Dr X. Perry Ment

Dr.X Perry Ment was visiting the 4th grade classrooms and 3/4 classrooms yesterday to share her scientific problem. Although she had been hired by Boeing to design some new wings for the latest airplane, she just didn't seem to have a method to answer their questions.


 Students listened to her scattered ideas, and then brainstormed ways to design an experiment that was more appropriate.  Students encouraged Dr.X Perry Ment to do a number of important things that she had missed:  understand and define the problem, make a plan, design an experiment that was fair, repeatable and had controlled variables (no windstorm testing for her planes!). They told her to make sure to use a science journal, to write down her plans, and to record her observations and results. All of this with minimal prompting!


Dr.X Perry Ment might make another visit to learn more about this process of designing experiments as these groups work on their matter unit in science over the next few weeks.


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I enjoyed a chance to be DRAMATIC in a mini-lesson on the scientific method and experimentation. I also found that students were not only highly engaged, but by proposing the opposite of the scientific method as a dishevelled and unorganized scientist, students displayed strong critical thinking skills in determining the correct method to attack the shared science problem.  And as I walked down the hall in the upper grade wing on Friday, I got the feeling that I will be known as Dr X to students for a while!!