5th Grade Curriculum
Project Description:
The purpose of this project was to create a two week chemistry curriculum for fifth graders. The guidelines were rather loose, so each group was able to put their own twist on the project, which resulted in a variety of different ideas and outcomes. Our group decided to touch base on a few main concepts that are useful to know in the future, and are also included in the California science standards. Some of these concepts include properties of certain groups of elements, atoms, states of matter, and chemical changes. We also had to look into the attention span of fifth graders as well as how to keep them engaged in activities. We eventually decided on creating short slideshows for them to take notes on, a few quick exciting labs, and a couple fun videos to enrich their understandings of the topics.
The purpose of this project was to create a two week chemistry curriculum for fifth graders. The guidelines were rather loose, so each group was able to put their own twist on the project, which resulted in a variety of different ideas and outcomes. Our group decided to touch base on a few main concepts that are useful to know in the future, and are also included in the California science standards. Some of these concepts include properties of certain groups of elements, atoms, states of matter, and chemical changes. We also had to look into the attention span of fifth graders as well as how to keep them engaged in activities. We eventually decided on creating short slideshows for them to take notes on, a few quick exciting labs, and a couple fun videos to enrich their understandings of the topics.
Reflection:
Overall, this was not one of my favorite projects. The main reason for this negative feeling towards it was that I felt like I didn't learn very much from it. I didn't learn any new chemistry concepts. I most likely would have enjoyed it more if I was hoping to one day be a teacher because we had to look into different teaching methods and standards. This being said, I would see this as being a project for another class preparing elementary school teachers. Perhaps if we were making a curriculum for high school students it would have seemed more engaging and interesting. The main skills that I learned from doing this project were how to simplify concepts while getting the main point across, and how to transform learning into fun activities. One main thing that our group could have improved on was splitting up the work evenly. A second thing we could have done better would be not procrastinating. We waited until last minute to fully put together many aspects of our project. Lastly, we could have practiced our presentation more before presenting it to the class because we seemed to be unsure of what order we were doing things in, and it made the presentation very choppy.