"Science is about making predictions, not about explaining, just because you can explain it doesn't mean you understand it." -Lessons From Thin Air
Today I watched the Lessons From Thin Air video and it correlated with the movie we watched on Monday.
The video started with grads from Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia I believe. They were asked how trees were made, and thrived. After many answers, the consensus was that trees thrive through soil, water, and sun.
The video then shows students in a 3rd grade classroom that are learning about photosynthesis. In order for trees to survive, the video tells us we need sun, water and carbon dioxide.
A common misconception is that air doesn't weigh anything. Relating back to the tree and how they produce carbon dioxide, the interviewer asked the 3rd grade student about how much a tree weighed. He said like a newborn, about 5 or 6 pounds. The interviewer asked if he thought gasses have weight, and he said no until she showed him the dry ice where he concluded that air in fact, could have weight.
I really learned a lot in this video because it was stuff I had learned a long time ago and I didn't realize how much I had forgotten.
One of the teachers in the video made a statement that stuck with me, "When you cover so much stuff, students learn very little." This is something we all need to keep in mind as we become teachers. I know tonight we talked about covering the standards and having time to let students adequately learn and I found this quote as a great reminder. We need to keep in mind that as we teach that we need to make it memorable so that children actually learn something rather than teaching as much as we can for an end of the year test.
Exactly! The same point from the video I watched where the teacher was talking about only getting through 9 chapters in the school year when other teachers were almost done with the book. Her class didn't cover as many topics, but the had a much better understanding of what they did cover because they were allowed to take the time to really learn the material. It takes a while for concepts to become part of your thinking as well as taking time for misconceptions to be "debunked".
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