Tools used to determine student preconceptions:
- Students draw a picture of a living thing and what it needs to live and be healthy in lesson 1.
This tool is designed to draw out student prior knowledge about what an organism is and what it needs.
- Clipboard Cruise teacher observation to use throughout the unit.
This tool is designed to draw out students developing understandings about organisms as well as note any individual misconceptions or those held by several in the group.
- Same and Different class charts in lessons 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.
This tool can be used during class discussion to elicit information about student understanding of the organisms in each lesson and their developing sense of characteristics of organisms.
- Venn diagrams or box & T-charts at various lessons in the unit.
This tool can be used as a component of student notebooks and ongoing embedded assessment to determine what students are learning about plants and animals as organisms.
Student Preconceptions
Students often have several misconceptions concerning organisms. Here are a few which teachers should attend to and correct should they arise.
1. A student preconception:
Students may not understand that plants are living things (or organisms) because they do not move and eat like animals do.
Correct conception:
Organisms are living things that use energy, maintain themselves by using food, produce waste, reproduce, grow change and develop. Plants also interact with their environment and have a life cycle just as animals do.
2. A student preconception:
Some students believe that plants get food from soil.
Correct conception:
Plants produce their own food using energy from the sun. While they don’t get food from soil they do access water and mineral nutrients which are necessary for cell production and photosynthesis. Water plants access the water and mineral nutrients directly from the water they float in.
3. A student preconception:
Many students will be familiar with the pill bug and know it as a roly-poly. Pill bugs are not insects contrary to common misconception.
Correct conception:
Pill bugs are arthropods and are part of the group of arthropods called isopods. Unlike insects, pill bugs do not have six legs and three distinct body parts. They are invertebrates with an exoskeleton of chitin. They molt, or shed this exoskeleton to grow. They like to nestle under the leaf litter and moss and will eat plant matter, occasionally including the tree seedlings.