Designing an Interesting Interest Approach

How do we get students excited about a unit or a lesson? Students must have the need to want to learn about the topic you are teaching to really engage in the lesson. Lets call this an interest approach. A five to ten minute engaging activity or demonstration that gets students curios about the lesson and excited to learn more. This week in lab was all about creating that exciting interest approach that you can use to kick off a lesson!

I chose to do my interest approach for a wildlife, fishery, and forestry science class. The class is for tenth and eleventh grade students. I will be teaching a unit on fish in Pennsylvania. Along with this we will be studying habitats and human impact. My interest approach was focused on this. I completed a simple demonstration for the students to show an example of a fish habitat and the impact humans can have on streams.

The class started off with bell work to review the lesson from the day before. Next I asked the students to quietly come to the front of the class. I had a container full of water with rocks in the bottom to simulate a clear stream. The students were asked to write on a piece of paper observations from the stream. Next I added sand to the stream. Again I asked the students to make observations on the stream and write them down on their paper. They were told to also consider the animals living in the habitat. Using straws I blew into the water to show the movement and amount of oxygen in the water. Following the same process I then added silt.

Overall this was a simple demonstration that had a big meaning. The student's were able to see what was happening and make observations on their own. Depending on the class I could modify this to have helpers and get the students more involved or have more of a discussion while the students are out of their seats. I also got the feedback from my peers that this could be used as a group experiment the students could preform, which is a great idea! I think the lesson went pretty good. I felt comfortable with what I was teaching and I got the students up and interested in the lesson. One thing I would improve would be getting the student's more involved in the lesson but I was a little intimidated they would mess up the demonstration. Suggestions are welcome on how to correctly facilitate the situation by getting the students as involved as possible and have the demonstration be a valuable learning experience.

If anyone is also teaching on fish habitats or needs a cool project here is video on making fish habitats and spawning ponds.