Assessment
The Three Questions will be a review from the Systems and Scale unit, but Level 2 students may still find the questions themselves hard to understand. In particular, they may be unable to connect the three columns in the Three Questions 11x17 Poster Note whether students use facts about matter and energy from slide 3 of the PPT as they try to answer the Three Questions.
During the class, listen to the ideas students offer in the final step of the activity. Do students’ predictions follow the rules? At this point, do not correct student ideas, but listen for what they say about matter and energy in the context of animal growth and movement. After class, use the 3.1 Assessing the Predictions and Planning Tool for Mealworms Eating to compare your students’ ideas with what we would expect to see in Level 4 responses.
This discussion will show that some students are still at Level 2 with respect to both their ideas about energy and their understanding of the questions. For example, do students have a sense of necessity about the connections between mass changes and movement of atoms? Do they recognize that if the mealworms lose mass, then atoms must be moving out of the mealworms? Do students account for energy separately from matter, or do they suggest that some of the matter in the mealworms might be converted to energy or disappear? You do not need to correct any problems now; they will be addressed through the investigation and Modeling in the Activities to come.
Tips
- Have a designated place in the classroom where students store their 3.1 Predictions and Planning Tool for Mealworms Eating so they can easily refer back to their ideas at the end of the lesson.
- Expect many students to make the right predictions for the wrong reasons. Note in particular whether they say that changes in the mass of the potato and mealworm indicate that atoms are moving.