Worrying about the beginning of the school year is something that all teachers do. This year in particular is a whopper. This is an activity that I love and have done now for the past couple of years. This year will be different, so I have modified instructions to include how this activity could function with everyone remaining 6ft apart and also how this could be done for remote learning as well. Some of the aspects of this activity that I love is that in the original design, the kids were able to get up and move around the room interacting with each other, we were able to discuss the basics of the scientific method with a concrete example and there was a built in get to know you section as well. It basically covers everything that the first day of school should be. The basic idea of this activity is that there are mystery items in film canisters that the students cannot see. The objective of the activity is for each student to figure out who has the same item in the canister as they do. They then need so figure out another way to "collect data" to figure this out. Through discussion of this activity, the topics covered include the steps of the scientific method, different ways of collecting data (direct vs. indirect), testing a hypothesis, deciding which pieces of data are useful, and a general discussion about how science works. After that discussion, students would then share answers to "get to know you" questions which are taped on to each canister. Designing the COVID modified classroom instruction was a bit tricky, but I was able to work it out and still get the same ideas of the original activity across. The same thing goes with the remote instruction design. In the COVID modified classroom instruction instead of students milling around the room, they are in two lines, spaced 6ft apart, and go down the line shaking their canister to find their match. Instead of a turn and talk during the discussion, a Padlet is suggested and for the get to know you questions, Flipgrid is suggested. The distance learning changes things a bit, but is intended to be used during synchronous video call learning. The number of canisters is reduced from a full class set to only 6 and they are numbered. The teacher shakes each one while students fill out a chart to keep track of which ones they think match. The rest of the instruction is similar to the COVID modified instruction. To go along with the remote learning instructions, I have also included the google slides for the teacher to show, along with a student digital interactive notebook google slides to go along with it. On the teacher presentation slides, everything in blue are items that students need to answer or include in their digital notebook. This guides the students through the activity and gives space for them to write down their answers to the discussion questions before sharing them with the class. **Bonus materials include the Do Now I use with the 1st day of school, the learning target and the exit ticket for that day. So you would be all set up for the 1st day of remote instruction with no extra effort on your part. How awesome is that! If you are looking for an engaging and meaningful 1st day of school activity, please check out my TpT page
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August 2021
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