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Carrie
The week before break I did FACT #29: Juicy Questions. I asked students to draw an energy pyramid with 4 organisms. Then I asked them to tell 2 things that would happen if the primary consumers in their pyramid died from a disease.
ReplyDeleteThe definition of a "Juicy Question" is that it "often requires students to work on a series of smaller questions and ideas before they take a stab at answer it. This FACT required my students to accurately place 4 organisms in an energy pyramid, identify the primary consumer, and then (what I was looking for) identify that the secondary and perhaps teritary consumers would run out of food and the producers would overpopulate. This proved to be a tricky FACT but I was glad to look at them over break and see which students could not even create their own food pyramid.
I think that I often gloss over this topic because I know they've studied food webs and producers and consumers before, and it seems very easy to grasp to me. However, we add another layer of depth in 7th grade and it seems to be a little tricky. I will be spending some time tomorrow going over this when I pass it back to them.
Your FACT, time permitting, would be a good candidate for small group sharing/discussion and then whole class discussion with chances for individuals to make corrections. How did the students perform on this FACT? We 7th teachers could team up and share results to see if those areas we take for granted they know need some re-teaching.
DeleteI also have this FACT, but I failed to pass it out in time. In reflecting on this, I wonder how they would do if I passed it out about 1 week into the new unit? Just a thought. I mean we do something similar with the POW when we pull questions from past lesson, why not a FACT that would target a past lesson?
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