Exploration Roach

A short activity for day one in the science class. Give students a live animal to observe, like a dubia roach. They write observations, questions, and make inferences to share with the class. Students must carefully observe how the roach moves with six legs and how it behaves in the container.

Guess What?

Students will have an object at their desk when they enter class, they are instructed to write onto a piece of paper as much as they can to describe they object they have. Other students in the class use their description to figure out which object it is describing. Try to find weird objects that students are not familiar with so they can’t easily name them.

Place Objects in a sealed container where students cannot see what’s inside. Students then manipulate the container and guess what might be inside. They can weigh the container

The Elephant Poem

This activity combines literature with science as a fun way to show students how important it is to make good observations in science.  The poem, written by John Godfrey Saxe and is about six blind men who all attempt to describe an elephant.  Each one touched only one part of the elephant and developed a very different idea of what the elephant must look like.