It’s a new school year and I have a new group of students in my grade nine applied science class. This semester I have this extraordinarily energetic group during the last period of the day. Although they are still “full of beans” when they come to my science lab they are unwilling, or unable to focus on anything for long. If I was expecting them to sit still and copy down notes or work from a textbook we would all be sadly disappointed and more than a little frustrated.
One of the activities I did with the students this week was a Pass – the – Paper Food Web Activity. Prior to engaging the learners in this activity we had already been outside one day to observe the flora and fauna in a local field and constructed food webs from the data we collected, we had done some food web activities on the smart board and we had watched a video about food webs. Thus, the students were familiar with food webs so this was a consolidation strategy.
(It had become apparent during the former activities that many of my students, who are new Canadians, had no idea what the local fauna eat so some just-in-time teaching took place.)
Since the students sit in pairs at tables in my room I assigned them partners who were also their table mate. Each pair numbered off, we had ten pairs of students numbering 1 through 10. The class was instructed that when they heard the words, “Pass the Paper” group one would pass their paper to group two, group two would pass their paper to group three, and so on with group ten passing to group one.
Each pair was given a large blank sheet to paper and a thick marker. Instructions were all oral. Instructions were as follows:
“At the bottom center of your paper write down the name of a plant.”
“Pass the paper.”
“On the bottom right of the paper you have now, write the name of a plant that is not already written on that paper. (It may be the plant you wrote on the first paper.)”
“Pass the paper.”
“At the bottom left of the paper you have now, write the name of a plant.”
“Pass the paper.”
“Four inches above the center plant write the name of a local herbivore.”
“Pass the paper.”
“To the left of the first herbivore, write the name of another herbivore.”
“Pass the paper.”
“On the right hand side of the paper, write one of the following: worm, squirrel or robin.”
“Pass the paper.”
“Draw arrows from any of the plants TOWARDS the animals that could eat them.”
“Pass the paper.”
“Above the row of herbivores write the name of a top carnivore, which would be found in Ontario!”
“Pass the paper.”
“Draw arrows to the top carnivore from any item it might eat.”
“Pass the paper.”
“Put down your markers, pick up your pens. Beside each plant write “Producer’”
“Pass the paper.”
“Beside each animal that eats plants write ‘First level consumer’.”
“Pass the paper.”
“If there is a worm anywhere on your poster write the word ‘Decomposer’.”
“Pass the paper.”
“Find the animal(s) on your poster that is not eaten by anything. Label it “Top Carnivore’.”
“Pass the paper.”
Final Instruction: “Find the sheet of paper you started with and put an appropriate heading on it.
Our end products were ten posters of food webs that were created collaboratively. Because each step of the process was open to both small and large group discussion each poster was perfectly correct. As we put the posters up on the wall the students were checking the time and exclaiming, “How did we get to the end of the period already?”, “Why does time always go so fast in this class?” “Are all the periods in this school 75 minutes? It doesn’t seem like it.”
Eureka! Collaborative learning strikes again!
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