Loosening up with Life Science

Loosening up with Life Science

In Middle School, I remember learning about animal cells and plant cells. We used microscopes a lot to view all kinds of different cells that belonged to different animals and plants. In High School, I remember learning about life science in biology. We learned about animal and plant cells as well chromosomes and genetics. Personally, I like life science, but I can't imagine Elementary Students have to learn the complexity of life science. I was proven wrong when looking through life science themed lesson plans where I found that 2nd graders are learning about plant and animal cells now. I was so surprised!

     For our project on Life Science, we were going to go through the Jigsaw Method. The Jigsaw Method is a collaborative learning method in which students are separated into expert groups to

become "experts" on a particular topic and then are separated into base groups in which they share the knowledge they gained in their expert groups. I like this way of learning, but I do feel like it has it's flaws. My one critique of this method is how is the teacher so sure that all of the students are learning sufficiently. I feel like the teacher can not rely only on this method as the main teaching style. The teacher can combine this method with another, but it should not be used alone.  

Click here to view our presentation on the Plantae Kingdom.

          The topic for my expert group was the plantae kingdom. I remembered learning about this before college, but have not revisited the topic since. We briefly researched basic information about plantae to teach our classmates. We looked up information like the definition of plantae, the cell type of plantae, the number of cells in plantae, the source of nutrition for plantae, the characteristic of the cell wall of plantae, and how the topic of plantae relates to New York State Standards. Instead of splitting back up to our base groups, we just presented in front of the whole class. I would have liked to present in our base groups to have the whole experience of the Jigsaw Method, but I still enjoyed the experience.