Thread:Required changes (1)

Hi folks,

I have had the opportunity to look over your work and I have suggestions:

Primary biological content area covered
be more explicit and make the link between sunlight energy driving chemical reactions that convert CO2 into carbon compounds with an O2 waste product.

Teacher materials

 * Be more specific in listing the Tap water conditioner.
 * Give the brand we used and state the reason for using it.
 * Move photographs of the glassware, and the home made versions up. Give each image a caption and number them: Figure 1.  An inverted baby food jar.....etc.  In this way you refer to the photos by number in your description of the activity.
 * Add photographs of the construction paper cutouts; also make this a job for the children rather than the teacher (obviously in our 20-minute session this is impractical, but few teachers would have time to make the cutouts and the scissors practice is good for young hands and minds)

Handout

 * q 4 is vague; q 5 provides the answer; perhaps you need a more leading question in this case; provide a word bank at the bottom for emerging readers and writers. In it's current form the handout may be intimidating for the average grade 2 student

lesson plan

 * refer to the figures by number (see above).
 * Don't make the bicarbonate seem optional; very briefly describe the chemistry happening here and perhaps find a chemistry resource on wikieducator to back this up
 * Fiery demonstration
 * With glass tubes or baby food jars, I doubt hat the gas will float the tube. It will displace the water however.
 * Replace sun with light source; Make a connection to the first law of thermodynamics for higher grades
 * Point out that the match demo requires a full tube of oxygen or air dilutes the effect. An alternative is to place a thumb over the still submerged tube, invert it, and then you have water on the bottom, and nearly pure oxygen on top; try it, it may work.  However, unless we have healthier plants, this piece may have to be dropped or changed to a suggestion
 * creating diagram; space needed after arrows

Pitfalls

 * add suggestion above as a solution. In general, offer suggestions for dealing with pitfalls

work on next steps
aquarium, plants, what else can be done? Fish habitat? compost? It is important to point out that purchased organisms should NEVER be released to the environment.

Standards
This section looks great. Keep up the good work. Dmccabe 19:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)