Still no master teacher, but we're trekking along just fine. She'll hopefully be back tomorrow.
Today's lesson: Finish the Evidence of Evolution video and do a Homologous Structures coloring-page for the remainder of the period. We had a collaboration meeting this morning that pushed back the school's start time, shortening classes from 57 minutes to 41 minutes.
The video went along without a hitch, and I found that the simple act of coloring not only met with a great deal of approval by the students, but also that the worksheet was a terrific assessment. My goal was to have the students make the connection from the definition of a homologous structure to actually see and color the homologous structures of mammalian forelimbs.
The students took to the worksheet quickly and began coloring. I quickly graded a completion assignment and made my rounds to take a look a the students' work. I was surprised to see some of the students incorrectly coloring some of the bones. After questioning the students, I realized that they could define the "homologous structures" but they couldn't quite apply the concepts to the diagrams of mammalian forelimbs on the worksheet.
I used students' own hands to connect the diagram of a whale's fin and bat's wings. Oh, how the lights came on. Like people who saw the magician's trick, the students made the connection between the definition from the textbook and the bones that they were coloring on the worksheet.
Next time I'll do a better job of including discussions and ask for examples for vocabulary before turning them loose on a worksheet, but I was glad that we did the coloring page. It turned out to be more of an assessment piece than an enrichment piece.
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