 Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to another apples and tiara's blog. Sorry I'm eating today is day two of a generation genius unit that I have started yesterday and today is station day. So I wanted to show you guys what stations my students are going to be working on today and kind of how I organize stations. So a few years ago at the dollar spot they were selling these cones and I have forever used my cones as like a station place marker and then I just use these covers to label where the stations are going to be. So let me finish setting up the station and then I'll walk you guys through all of them. Alright so the kids are going to be going to four stations today. Each station is going to take about eight minutes. So that's going to approximately be about 60 minutes worth of station time. I'm going to take you through each station and then kind of explain how I organize stations and then what I do for the students who are not at a station at the time. So station one is where students are to build a tower using both the Legos and the wooden blocks. They're supposed to shake the cookie sheet with the wooden blocks first and write down what they observe. Then second they're supposed to shake the cookie sheet with the Legos and write their observations. Then they're supposed to answer the question on their lab sheet which is basically why did the wooden blocks fall but the Legos didn't and hopefully they're going to say something about the fact that these pieces sort of fit together like a puzzle. They're a lot smaller and they are stuck together in some way. So the point here is for them to be able to see that like basically just stacking bricks on top of each other to create a building isn't really going to work. There needs to be some sort of like way to connect the building to itself so that it's harder to knock down during an earthquake. Then station three so they're kind of out of order just because of the layout of the room so this is just how it had to be. So they're gently to push the two graham crackers into one another and observe what happens as they collide. What happens when they separate? No peach. She's gonna be all up in the yogurt. Okay. Then what happens when they separate? Write your observations down. What types of landforms do you think could be made during this process? So the point of this lab is for them to see how tectonic plates move and how when they smash together pieces of earth either break off or they raise up and when they separate there is a gap. So hopefully they will not make a huge mess with the graham crackers. Luckily I have like a ton of extra and I have like four more tubs of yogurt so if there was to be like a problem we have the supplies. But there is one tray for each student because I have seven groups of four now and there's one tray for each student in the group so that should be plenty for them to work with. And then station two is over here on my cart. I'm actually going to be kind of standing in right here in between stations three and two because these are the messiest. But students are supposed to observe the land and the biosphere which they already know is the living things before doing anything. They drop the small ball into the deep end of the water and make an observation of land and biosphere and write down what happens. So they can drop the ping pong ball and what they're supposed to observe is that there are waves that go toward the land and then they're going to drop a bigger ball and hopefully they're going to see that there are bigger waves. I wish that I could get this a little bit deeper but basically the essential part that they're supposed to grasp here is that a disturbance in the water or on the ocean floor is going to create a wave and you know that's a tsunami. So we'll go that. I might end up putting a bigger rock. I have bigger rocks so we'll see if if they're not grasping the whole like big disturbance thing I might find a bigger rock that I have that they can drop in there. And then station four. Do not ask me why I have this wagon here. I don't even want to go there. This is just a discussion station so they're discussing questions with their team and answering questions. What are some of the dangers about a volcanic eruption? What are some effects this could have on plants animals and people and how can we protect these organisms from volcanic eruptions? So this is really just supposed to be a place for them to discuss some questions right down their thoughts and then they return to their seat. So what are the other students doing while those four groups are up at stations? Great question. So the stations are eight-minute rotations each that's about 32 minutes per like group. So because I have seven groups I'm going to be doing two 32-minute rotations which will be around it's supposed to be under 70 minutes. I have a 90-minute block. Normally I block out the whole 90 minutes for stations because one they need enough time to get from one station to the next and have time to clean it up. So I typically will remind them around five to six minutes hey it's time to start resetting your station which means putting it back in the condition you found it. So that means like taking the balls out of the sand putting the tree back where it goes things like that if it gets knocked over. And then the students that are not at the actual stations at the time will be working on some sort of like enrichment activity. Today I've assigned them a boom card deck that is all about earthquakes and natural disasters. So if they're not at a station they're sitting at their table they're working on this boom cards assignment quietly. If they finish early they have a whole choice board of things that they can work on from typing club, sc math, prodigy, epic reading. There's a whole ton of things that they can pick from and they just need to be doing it quietly at their seat until it is time for them to get up and do their rotations. After the station rotations are done I typically will follow up with a discussion about what they found at the station or what they observed or maybe the purpose of the station what they were supposed to be getting from it. And then I kind of go through some of the discussion questions that Generation Genius gives. And then tomorrow we will watch the Generation Genius video we will play the Kahoot game and we will do an exit ticket. Now the only thing I don't love about this Generation Genius lesson in particular is that there isn't really so the learning target or the standard is I can generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impact of natural earth processes on humans. So they're not actually generating anything like there isn't a challenge where they build something and then we test it which I don't love. In the past I've done that with like toothpicks marshmallows on a jello tray and we put it on a shake table and we watch it shake which I do have the shake table and I do have all of the things to make jello but tomorrow is the last day before spring break and we just ran out of time. So the good news though is that throughout this unit the kids have been like discussing so many different solutions that they think would reduce the impact on human beings. So they're not necessarily building or creating anything this time unfortunately but they are generating these ideas and discussing them. So it's still an intentional lesson. I'm still letting them have these arguments not real arguments you guys know what I mean scientific arguments about these solutions and their ideas and then through the video they'll get to actually see some real ones which is really awesome. So unfortunately because of the time crunch I'm not going to be able to do that. I might be able to pick it up when we come back from spring break but to be honest with you we have so many things happening right after spring break like testing the week after we return from spring break the whole week we're testing. So and my student teacher is taking over the science days we actually have to break up our day we've kind of decided that she is going to take over fully take over science instruction and I will be doing social studies and other like housekeeping stuff on the days she's not here because she's only here three days a week so I believe she's going to be coming Monday Tuesday Wednesday every week and then on Thursdays and Fridays I will teach social studies either that or she's going to come Wednesday Thursday Friday and on Mondays and Tuesdays I would teach social studies. So we're going to kind of split it up like that I really want to give her the opportunity to teach social studies but because of the schedule it just makes more sense for her to be the sole science person she's going to plan science prep science grade science deliver science that way there's no like oh okay well what did you cover yesterday she's going to be taking over science completely that way there's no like um she won't like have missed anything if that makes sense and then I'll just do social studies which means there will be two days of social studies every week which is totally fine with me um it'll be I'll probably have more time throughout the quarter because usually I do like six weeks on and six weeks off um or I do like one week on and one week off so this will be great because I'll have two days every week so I think it will balance out but um okay so how do I manage stations well I'm going to show you let's look around so I have this slide um basically what I do is I explain the directions of each station prior to letting my students go to them um I walk through it I read the directions for them I don't really like I don't fully model what they're supposed to do but I kind of like show them in my own way because I don't want to ruin the materials um but basically I'll just kind of read through each one of these and then this is kind of how I organize it so I have an eight minute timer so that's per station and then I have which table is starting where and which direction they go so North America will start at station one and then rotate through to station four so they'll go one two three four South America starts at station two and rotates through station one so we'll start at two three four and then one and then same same for Europe and Africa and then you'll see that there's the three extra tables that will begin with their boom cards and wait and then begin after North America so once North America sits down they just get up and goes same with Australia once South America sits down Australia goes and then same with South Africa once Europe is done they will go and then I just keep this time rotating through and once I start it around five or six minutes I just go down okay it's time to start like resetting your station make sure you respond to all of your um questions and get ready to move and then this is the station lab sheet that I give them it is something that they will be turning in it's called notebook tasks natural disasters I always put the learning target on it and then a space for the date and then there is a space for them to respond to all of the questions that are on their directions card these over there and then this is kind of what we'll use for our discussion after the um station so we kind of discuss what they were supposed to see at each one what their um answers our responses were and then that is typically the whole thing so that is what we're doing today in fourth grade science again we have spring break starting after tomorrow um so we're kind of just trying to wrap things up and everything that we're doing like this week is all going toward like quarter four um but this is kind of like the wrap up of our earthquake unit we um we had a lot of fun with it it was a good time what called that it's on the ground magma magma okay so the yogurt is magma and then the ground purpose is to climb plates so when the magma is coming up in the middle like that what do you think that forms well that too but like what kind of landform is it being built what happens when magma comes out of the earth um okay no okay no you guys already set thank you um so anyways thank you guys so so much for watching if you are interested in following me on instagram the link will be down in the description box below all of my glasses frames are also um connected to a discount code it will be linked down below as well i absolutely love my zenf glasses and thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in the next video bye guys