Light Test

                

Monday's lesson was a lot of fun. Kelly and I set everything up as usual and talked about what we were going to do for the lesson. We wrote the agenda on the board as well for everyone to follow. We wanted to show the students the differences between the 3 squares, (transparency, wax paper and cardboard) and our lovely classmate Sarah :) let us borrow her flashlight to show the students a cool way to explain it. We started out by asking the students what we learned last week and some were confusing the week before with last weeks lesson, but they eventually remembered they learned the streak test and I reminded them what the difference between observable color and identifying color was.  We then passed out squares of transparency, wax paper and cardboard to each group and asked them to write down words to explain the color and differences of these three materials.  After the students had a chance to discuss words to describe them we asked them to share their ideas and we wrote them on the board. The students had some great words to describe the three different squares.  After we told them what each square was called in relation to light. The transparency was transparent, the wax paper was translucent and the cardboard was opaque and explained each one.                                

                       

  We then told the students we wanted to show them how these three squares are transparent, translucent and opaque with a light test. We warned them we were going to shut the lights off for a minute and we had to calm them down alittle because they seemed to get very excited.  Kelly held up the transparent square and shined the flashlight through it to show how you could clearly see all of the light through it.  She then held up the wax paper and shined the flashlight on it to show some of the light was going through it and then she held up the cardboard square to show that no light was shining through it.  The students thought it was really neat and I think it helped them clearly understand the difference of the three vocabulary words. 

I then told the students we were going to be doing a light test with the minerals to see which one were transparent, translucent and opaque.  I held up mineral E and explained to hold the mineral in front of you and put the light behind it so the light is shining towards the mineral and you to see if you can see light shining through.  We explained how it is important not to shine the light in anyone's face because it could really hurt their eyes and to please shut the lights off when they were not using them. 

We then passed out the minerals and the lights to all of the students and told them we did not have enough lights for every group and to please share them.  We all did mineral E together so they could get the hang of how to use the light.  They were then on their own and they were all very eager to do the lesson.  The students did a great job sharing the lights and working together on this lesson. They also did a great job to shut the lights off when they were not using them to save the battery. We did not even have to remind them. Kelly and I walked around and asked the students questions about what they see and they were very excited to tell us what they discovered. They seemed to go through this part of the lesson kind of quickly so we told them they could read about the different minerals in the back of their journal and also they could organize the minerals into the three different categories.

At the end we cleaned up all the materials and finished the lesson off with what they learned today.  The students told us they learned about transparent, translucent and opaque and which minerals are which ones.  The students had so much fun and so did I. Next week we will be our last lesson on luster :(.   I am very excited for this lesson, but also very sad because it will be our last one. These students are great and I will miss them.