SPECIAL SUBJECT
SCIENCE
OBSERVATION
Observation
Louise Govier PGCE Early Years Science
Teaching needs to focus the children’s ability to make and communicate observations. They are exploring the world around them, this has so far been done instinctively whereas now they need to explore in a more scientific way.
This can be done by investigating objects using all their senses, observing and using focused questions, talking about their observations, recording their own observations and comparing observation, what is similar? Are there differences? This can be extended by questioning such as ‘I wonder what will happen if....?’
The use of children’s senses as an aid to observation of their surrounding world
During BEES1 I worked with a reception class, the topic I covered during the five weeks in Knowledge and Understanding of the World (KUW) was that of senses.
SIGHT HEARING TASTE TOUCH SMELL
Each week I focused on a different sense. The preliminary aim of the five weeks teaching was to allow the children to learn that the senses in both the human and animal kingdom are important, that they influence the way animals and humans live and shape our lives by determining what and how we do things. I felt that they would learn best by experiencing the use of their senses, hearing different sounds, touching different materials, smelling various substances and tasting different foods.
Week 1 Sight
The sense of sight was taught during the first week and I related that to camouflage which I incorporated into a camouflage wall display. I began the first week working on teaching about the sense of sight. I organised and planned the camouflage activity with the help of the TA. . I introduced the activity early in the week by talking briefly about our senses and focusing on sight, we played Kim’s Game which uses sight and memory recognition. Later in the week with the main activity (camouflage) the learning outcome for the class was to increase their interest in science, gain an understanding of camouflage and its relationship to our sight. This was done by teaching the children the reasons why we use camouflage and its benefits to us and animals in the world.
Key questions within the lesson were ‘why do animals use camouflage? And ‘how does it help them in their lives’? I used laminated pictures from the internet and also pictures I took myself of animals in Tanzania.
The class was organised throughout the five weeks by firstly sitting on the carpet as a group and then working in groups supervised by myself or the TA. The children enjoyed the lesson and they worked well in their groups but I’m not sure they made the link between their sense of sight and the focus of camouflage.
Week 2 Hearing
This lesson took little planning and I felt was most valuable to the children. The learning outcome was to show curiosity as to varying sounds, learning to listen and identify sounds that they can hear. Key questions were ‘is the sound loud or quiet? And ‘do we have to be able to see things to allow us to identify them by their sound’? By simply letting the children listen on a sound walk around the inside and outside of the school gave them great insight in to the sounds around us all the time. The sound lotto game was fun for them and allowed them to distinguish between varying sounds that they heard. The structure of the lesson and the organisation of having two groups allowed a more focused approach to each activity.
Week 3 Touch
This was a fun activity that created many laughs. I wanted the children to tell me how objects inside the feely box felt. The sense of touch is a vital sense to many areas of our lives; I wanted the children to be able to explore this without frightening them. The children all participated and I made sure that if they didn’t want to put their hand in the box they needn’t. I made sure the boxes were well covered and choose a variety of textures from baked beans to sandpaper. Key questions I asked were ‘can they tell me how it feels and what they think it is’? The main difficulty was the organisation of the groups many children repeated what others had said. It would be good if you could work with children individually or in pairs, but realistically in a classroom context this wouldn’t be possible.
Week 4 Smell
I wanted this activity to continue in a practical way allowing the children to be able to explore varying smells, linking to sight in that they don’t have to see the smell to identify it. I placed cotton wool in containers and added a scent to it. These ranged from vanilla essence to onion, I wanted to see if they could identify two scents that were the same. This would allow me to observe their ability to recognise similar components within a series of components, developing their early skills in investigation and exploration. The key questions were ‘can you tell me what is in the scent box’? And ‘can you match two smells that are the same’? This activity gave me great insight into how children’s minds work. Some of them responded to smelling a given item to what they relate the smell too, not the smell itself. An example of this was that when they smelt onion they said sausages or salad and they related perfume to mummy.
Week 5 Taste
The introduction into this activity included an explanation of our taste buds on our tongues. I wanted the children to explore the taste of different foods and the texture of the foods in their mouths. I choose food that ranged from water biscuits to raisins allowing a variety of different taste sensations. A difficulty I found with this activity was that the children weren’t keen on trying things they didn’t like, or hadn’t had before. I made sure none of the children had allergies to any of the foods I was using. The activity was organised with four to five children sat around a table with me. I mixed higher and lower ability children to promote a wider vocabulary of describing words. When preparing I cut the food in front of the children to allow them to visualise what they were going to taste. I asked them to hold the food and look at it carefully before they eat it. This allowed them to predict what they thought it would taste like and how the texture of it would feel in their mouth. Key questions related to the texture of the food in their mouth and how it tasted, this promoted some amusing answers such as raisins are lumpy and cheese is squidgy.
General
Within the class we had a topic table which each week I changed the books to relate to each sense we were exploring. The books came from a valuable resource called Resources for Learning, (http://www.somerset.gov.uk/somerset/learning/rfl/index.cfm) which is linked to Somerset County Council. Through the teachers long term planning they can see in advance topics that they are going to cover. This allows books that relate to a given topic to be loaned to the school for a period of time, a library service but on a bigger scale. The books were available at all times, I used them with my intro each week and encouraged the children to look at them and read them during their free play. Also within my introduction each week I used another valuable resource, Espresso, an interactive and informative IT web resource. Through this I was able to show the class videos of other children discussing the topic of senses. Having the use of these resources helps in my opinion focus the children at the start of the lesson. It is important not to rely on them though, technology often doesn’t work and you need to be able to adapt your lesson if things don’t go to plan.
Assessment
Within the lesson one I didn’t undertake any observation of the children specifically and this could have been accomplished by the TA whilst I was conducting the introduction. Also how the children were sat on the carpet could have been adapted, sitting them in a horseshoe shape with me sitting on the floor with them. This would have allowed the children to have had a better view of the books I referred to; also I would have been on the same level as the children and would have had a better view of their concentration and interaction within the lesson. I feel when I repeat the topic of senses at a later stage in my teaching career I would make more of introducing all of the five senses. Possibly with a body shape background and letting the children label where our senses are on our body and how the children think these senses help us.
Within the lesson two related to the sense of hearing I needed to find a way of assessing what the children had learnt. One game that I later discovered was The Apple Pie game; sitting in a circle one child is blindfolded in turn and is guided to sit on another child’s lap.
The un-blindfolded child says ‘Apple Pie’ and the blindfolded child has to guess whose lap they are sat on. You could also create a tick sheet detailing sounds that they may hear on their walk, they could use with pens and clipboards to tick off the ones they hear and on returning they could draw a picture map detailing where they heard specific sounds.
The following weeks three, four and five I produced a word observation sheet for each week. This detailed the words that the children used to describe touch, smell and taste. This had limited assessment value and often the children repeated what other children had said. I feel for the purpose of assessment, photographs of the children exploring and investigating their different senses would be appropriate. In weeks four and five I completed individual observations of all of the children answering short questions relating to the lesson and learning objective. These could be used for assessment and can often be related to cross-curricular areas, such as personal, social and emotional development.
Attached
Photo of camouflage display
Camouflage pics
Word observation sheet (adapt accordingly)
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If anyone want more info on any subjects covered please feel free to email me:
My main book that I used for research was Enriching Early Scientific Learning by Jane Johnston & Adelaide Gray