Playing with Fire and Ice {Interest Approach Lab}

To plan for this lab I decided to use a lesson from my first unit plan I developed and also make it my first informational lesson plan to hand in on Friday. My unit is Introduction to Welding and the lesson title is, "What is Arc Welding?" To prepare for the lesson I practiced the interest approach several times and was successful. In class though, my activity was not successful for my students and it is still weighing on me because it was my fault as the instructor.

My intention for the lesson:

• Students guess what will happen and how it will happen
• Students try to weld ice with a candle
• Students write down their observations and conclusions 
• Teacher states the objectives
• Discuss what student's hypothesis, observations, & conclusions were
• Explain what a weld is
• Have students try again

 What actually happened in lab:

• Students guess what will happen and how it will happen
• Students try to weld ice with a candle
• Students write down their observations and conclusions 
• Teacher states the objectives

Not having the last two parts made my interest approach lack context and content. In saying that, I needed to be prepared with questions and statements to provoke creative thinking on how to weld the ice cubs together while my students worked. 

  

The activity needed more clarification and direction to ensure students were learning and not just doing. This could have been solved by developing questions and statements to ask during their welding time such as, "If the wax is not working, how else can we weld the ice cubes together? Think about ice in a water bottle." This would have been beneficial to insert before the students tried a second time.

On a less critical note, this activity I will utilize in a lesson plan and I learned a lot from practicing this interest approach once with students. I was happy with how the "entering the shop" exercise worked and incorporating the scientific method into the interest approach. Including the scientific approach allowed me time to hand out materials which was a planned moved. After watching the video I thought I accomplished control and filtered enthusiasm today, but still engaged my students.

One of Lancelot's primary principle's of interest states, "Interest increases with the acquisition of any given ability or skill". The students wanted to try a second time to figure it out, but would they have been interested enough in a third? I want my students to be successful in this activity so they keep in interest in wanting to weld metal later on in the class.

Takes aways:

• Provide the direction and guidance towards success and learning
• Effective questioning - preparation ahead of time! 
• With an activity involving hot wax and flames it is important to always be looking around and on the move
• Sell the tickets - this is a Teach Like a Pirate concept that I need to remember with every interest approach I implement