Shareefah Pereira

EDU 374- Teach Elem School Science

Professor Beth Klein
Oil Spill Group

Lesson Objectives:
Students will be able to list at least three ways an oil spill negatively
effects plants, animals and water.
Students will be able to verbally describe ways to help clean up an oil
still through reflection.

Standards:

Elementary Science Core Curriculum Grades K-4. Key Idea 5:

Performance Indicator 5.2g: The health, growth, and development
of organisms are affected by environmental conditions such as the
availability of food, air, water, space, shelter, heat and sunlight.

Elementary Science Core Curriculum Grades K-4: Key Idea 6:

Performance Indicator 6.1f: When the environment changes, some
plants and animals survive and reproduce, and others die or move to
new locations.

Procedures:
Engage:
o Prince William by Gloria Rand.
Cover and picture walk.
Predictions.
Have you heard of an oil spill? If you dont know what an
oil spill is, what could it be? Turn and talk to a friend. 45
seconds.

Explore:
o Oil Spill by Melvin Berger read certain pages pertaining to
activity.
Book explains methods of how to clean oil spills.

After read explain activity.

Split into 3 groups of 5.
Assign children roles (documenter, spokesperson, 3
testers).
Explain activity and materials more in depth once in
groups.
Start by doing part B together (blow up).

Explain:
o Do activity Spokesperson doubles as observer to help
documenter. They observe while testers experiment.
Documenter writes down observations on part C.

Evaluation:
o After experiment, children will be asked to reflect on their
learning by talking to each other in their groups of 5.
Spokesperson will verbally share findings.

Elaborate:
o Write a postcard to a big oil company explaining the negative
effects oil spills have on plants, animals and water.
o If time show letter at the end of Oil Spill book.

Materials List:
- Vegetable oil
- Newspaper
- Pans
20
- Rocks
18
- Plants
18
- Animals (pipe cleaners and figurines)
- Measuring cup/beaker
- Water
- Disposable pipettes
6
- Plastic cups
- Spoons
- Coffee filters
- Clipboards
- Paper towels
- 4x6 index cards
- Pens/pencils
12
- Markers
8
- Masking tape
Copies of:
- Pg. 184 Part A

Quantity:
3-4

25

3
50

Pg. 185 Part B

8 ENLARGED COPIES

Pg. 186 Part C

Pg. 187 Animal Rescue

8
40

Roles:
- Picture walk Taylor
- Oil Spill Staci
- Explaining Activity Jennifer
- Group Facilitators Shareefah, Jennifer, Katelyn (Taylor, Krista and
Staci walk around, help when needed)
- Wrap up/Evaluation/Explanation of Assessment (Postcard) Krista

Post-Teaching Reflection
My group members and I set up a lesson about an Oil Spill in the
ocean. We were prepared for 15 students for each grade level, however
when we got to the school that afternoon only a few students actually
showed up. I felt at times the adult to child ratio was very uneven. We set up
the activity in a way that everybody would have been able to get a chance to
talk to and interact with the students. But because of the low turnout that
was hard to facilitate. I felt that some of the members dominated the lessons
and didnt give others a chance to interact with the students at certain
times.
Our initial plan was to have two people read two different books and
explain the activity to the students. Then the other group members will
conduct the activities with the students. The activity was described as having
one student be the scribe, another the spokesperson for the groups findings
and the other three would be the experimenters. They were experimenting to
see what tools would extract the most oil from the ocean in our mock oil spill.

When we started with the first group, the fifth graders, children trickled in at
different times so we started our activity with some of them. As they others
filtered in we redid the reading and explanation part. Because we had
various stations set up I suggested that it would be a good idea to split the
students up into two different stations because at that point there were eight
students, four boys and four girls. After splitting the groups it was easier for
each of the teacher candidates to get a chance to teach a part of the
lesson.
While we were doing the activity a student mentioned that they had
learned something similar in one of their other classes. Their teacher was
also circling around looking as we taught the activity, he asked very
insightful questions and got the students thinking. He asked one of the
students to think about a time when they go to a lake or fishing with a friend
or family member and if they can remember how the lake looks after boats
pass over the water. Some of the students thought about the ripples or the
movement of the water but one little boy mentioned how it looks almost like
a rainbow because of the oil. From their responses I could tell that some of
the students had the ability to think deeply and connect the text to the
activity that we were doing.
One of the little girls who was the recorder suggested that the activity should
have been set up so everybody got a chance to be an experimenter and that
each student should get a chance to experiment with the different tools that
we used to extract the oil from the water. The group of students that I

worked with were so engaged in getting out the oil from the water. One little
girl told me she had a technique for getting the oil out of the water because
the oil looked different and she also mentioned that she could tell which
material she was extracting because as she said, the water comes out of
the turkey dropper easy but the oil takes a while and its harder to push out.
At the end of the activity we had the students write a letter to the oil
company explaining the effects of oil spilling in the oceans. The children
were very proud and excited to write to the companies telling them about
the effects of their products. We gathered a variation of letters from the
students.

It was hard for me to co-teach and co-plan with so many other people
with opposing teaching methods and styles. Despite that we also had limited
resources and limited knowledge about the students beforehand or our
environment. I did enjoy brainstorming and working in tandem with my
fellow teachers but I think because we had such an uneven number of
students and teachers it was a little difficult not to just fall back and have the
other teachers take over everything. As a person who loves hands on
activities for any content, as a future teacher I hope to add these types of
activities into my classroom. The science lesson can incorporates ELA and
Math. The students reactions showed an indication that they liked the lesson.
In the future I would definitely keep the learning activities to small group
depending on the age group, teachers or helpers in the classroom present,
because these types of lessons can get a little messy.