Week 9- Birds

What question are we investigating?

For the ninth week of Science Methods I, we would look at the questions: “What makes a bird a bird” and “Where do organisms get their traits?”. We would firstly individually do the Habitat Probe and pick which answer was the best in our personal opinion. Then we would talk in small groups over our answers and eventually talk as a whole group about the different answers. We also would do a card sorting activity in small groups and watch two videos about birds. This would allow us to be able to answer the driving question for this week. 

What did we do in lab to investigate this question?

The teacher started by asking everyone to do the Habitat Probe and saying it would help us remember what we talked about before spring break. That would allow us to talk in small groups about the answers and evidence for it. We eventually came up with a final answer and my small group would pick that divos would die. We also created evidence for this answer and that would help when we went into whole groups to talk about it. Then in small groups we would create models for natural selection. My small group would use marshmallows and lentils as predators in rice as the base where they lived. We would only use a fork in scooping out the predators and give 20 seconds to see how much someone would be able to get. 

What did we figure out?

Another main part of the class was to be in small groups and do a card sorting activity. This would allow small groups to sort out the first animals based on specific characteristics like being a mammal or a reptile. Eventually, we would go back in whole groups and talk about how as a small group we sorted these animals and this would allow me to see the similarities or differences in others ways of sorting the different animals. Then the teacher would give the small groups a second set of animals that were ancestors of the current animals that are alive and pick where they would be in different categories based on the first animals. After a little bit of allowing small groups to pick where these animals would go she would make us watch a video. This would allow us to see what animals these second cards were now. She would ask as a whole group if we thought dinosaurs were ancestors of birds. This would go into the next video and allow everyone to see how scientists found evidence to support the claim that birds are ancestors of dinosaurs. This would be a very interesting video in my opinion and support my initial thoughts believing that dinosaurs were ancestors of birds. It would show different fossils and the similarities or differences in their bone structures to show the claim that birds are ancestors of dinosaurs. The video also would show how dinosaurs had feathers but it initially wasn’t for flying and explaining the different reasons that they needed feathers like mating or for warmth. 

What are new or remaining questions after the investigation? 

This lab taught me about how to use activities in my future classroom and to allow the students to pick how they want to model with something like natural selection. It also allowed me to see how open-ended activities will help the students use more of their critical thinking skills in the classroom setting and be able to see how their initial thoughts worked in their models or not. That could allow the students to create a new model based on the new information they learnt and see if that works better or not to show natural selection.