“How do you know how to do this?” asked my daughter’s first-grade teacher in the middle of an activity I was doing with the class. I suppose her expectations of my abilities to engage 6 and 7 year-olds about plants were low, but I was just relieved to hear that she wasn’t mortified that I had brought bags of poison ivy into her classroom. As I was preparing, I asked myself many times whether bringing poison ivy on a school visit was a good idea, but I duct taped the Ziploc bags of poison ivy shut and went for it. Though our activity was going to focus on observation and prediction, I’m often surprised at the number of people who cannot identify poison ivy, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to show the students what it looks like. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that first graders know A LOT of things, including many other people named Sarah, who I heard about in detail (not a big surprise considering the number of Sarahs out there, especially in the demographic of people who have first graders). They also have many thoughts on poison ivy, which was wonderful.
We talked about the difference between an observation and a prediction (Observation: Ms. F’s shirt is green. Prediction: Ms. F’s favorite color is green), and they worked in small groups to make their own observations. It was tough for them to really stick to observations and not “I think” statements. By prediction time, they all suspected that it was poison ivy, so we made predictions about the color, how I got the plants into the bags without getting a rash, and why poison ivy is poisonous. The students had a lot of ideas to share, some related to the observations and predictions and some about their personal experiences with poison ivy. One of the quieter students very quickly predicted that the plant makes toxic oils to defend against plants, which was amazing.
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