Week at Good Shepherd Montessori
posted by: abeebe
This is a picture of students rescuing their zebrafish larvae which spilt on the floor, and were swimming around in a puddle of water. They were able to pipette all of the fish up, and place them back in their petridish-good save!
I am working with third graders over at Good Shepherd Montessori this week. It is small in numbers, but big in motivation! I have no other adults helping, and was a little concerned on Tuesday when, after the students harvested their embryos, they moved to observe them with the microscopes. Usually, this is THE most labor intensive time of the week for me-most students are struggleing to find a good image of the embryos. I do preface this time with a little “pep-talk” to the students, letting them know that this is the first time they are using these microscopes. I warn them to be patient with themselves, and just experiment/feel their way around the scopes, and they will need a little time to get comfortable with them. This usually NEVER works that way, however, and the students (even high school students) quickly begin to call out in frustration that they can’t figure it out, or they just give up.
Well…… I didn’t even have time to give my little “pep-talk”, but I was in for a GLORIOUS suprise!!! These children, who are used to working independently in the tradition of Maria Montessori, said not ONE word of complaint/frustration, but all were engaged at figuring it out by themselves. It was wonderful! I had two long tables of microscopes, with a fairly large and high book “island” in-between the 2 tables, and I was anticipating frantically moving from one table to the other, with a very overwhelmed bunch of students impatiently waiting for me to show them how to use the scopes. What I heard was “Wow, we are doing real science work!” from one of the students. It was a blast! I wish I had had my video camera running, because it was truly wonderful.
Here are some pictures and a short video from the last day.
