Melissa Pollard teaches through hands-on activities
By: Stacey Gorski
For Melissa Pollard, a first-grade teacher at the Greenbrook School, the best way to teach her students is to keep them busy, moving smoothly from one aspect of the lesson to the next.
In one science lesson, Ms. Pollard’s students include a review of the previous science lesson, a group discussion, reading a story to the students, group work doing hands-on research, a closing class evaluation and a worksheet.
With each aspect of the lesson, she repeats the most important concepts while also engaging students through sight, touch and sound.
She starts the lesson with listening. "What are the different ways to move an object?" she asks as students sat on a rug at the front of the classroom.
Her students answer, raising their hands: push, pull and lift. Next, she asks about what they had done in their previous science lesson.
"We were using cars. We pushed and pulled," said Adam Cohen.
He and other students continue their discussion, explaining that the cars moved better on the smooth tile floor than on the rough carpet.
Ms. Pollard, pleased with their recollections, transitions to a story about simple machines. In each case, she explains how certain machines help people.
After the story, the students break off into groups of three or four to begin their hands-on work with machines.
"Each group will have a piece of wood and box," said Ms. Pollard, "Some with a game, but don’t play the game. Also, you will have four blocks and each of the blocks are different."
The students, still sitting together in the front of the room, are shown samples of blocks that each group would have. Each of the four blocks had different characteristics: one was wrapped in wax paper, one in sandpaper, one in nothing and one has tacks stuck in the bottom.
Only Tajas Vaghela is brave enough to admit that he isn’t sure what sandpaper is, and he is rewarded by a chance to touch the block. Suddenly, everyone needs to feel the roughness.
"I want to feel it, too," said Austin Fisher.
Once the sample blocks are examined, the students return to their groups and begin pushing their group’s blocks across smooth wooden boards.
"Make sure everyone has a turn," Ms. Pollard said.
All around the room, students, using varying amounts of force on the blocks, can see the difference in which the blocks move easily across the board and which do not.
"OK," said Ms. Pollard, "now, put the box under one side of the board. Then, just slightly touch the blocks and see how far they go."
Gradually, each group gets its box under one of the board, creating a ramp. There work is aided by their teacher and her assistant, Jodi Spannagel.
"What does the board look like?" said Ms. Pollard.
"A diagonal," said Eddie Martin.
"OK. But what else?" said Ms. Pollard.
Eventually, one of the students answers a ramp, and Ms. Pollard leads them to the lesson’s new science term: inclined plane. Once the students experiment with the ramp, Ms. Pollard polls them about which blocks moved the fastest.
"The one in the wax paper moved the fastest," said Manisha Agrawala, after evaluating her work with Erica Eisenberger, Sonali Patel and Alexandra Orlan.
All but one group has the wax paper as the fastest, and that group had listed the regular block as the quickest.
"All right, why are those blocks the fastest?" the teacher asked.
"Because they are smooth," Bradley LeHan said.
They go on to talk about friction, and then the students played a little with the inclined plane, this time making them extremely steep by using their desks instead of the box. They also covered some of the wood slabs in wax paper, quickening the pace of the block’s movements.
Finally, the class reviews the day’s lesson by using a worksheet that helps them recognize the new vocabulary they learned.
Altogether, the six different aspects of the lesson takes slightly over an hour.
"Just another busy Friday," she said.