Lisa A. Vasas
EC-406-DC Primary Student Teaching and Seminar
Project Based Learning report
Phase One Dental Health month is February, so this seemed to be a good topic to begin with. As a mother, I see the benefits of children brushing their teeth regularly. Also, my cooperating teacher suggested this topic for this month she always introduces it because it is as known a national dental health month. To introduce the dental health unit, I used a KWL chart to see what the students knew and what they wanted to learn. Then we talked about dental health with our teeth. The children enjoyed discussing what they knew about dental health. They seemed to only know the basics though. For instance, brush them, floss them every day, they attend 6 month check-ups and they brush side to side. Even though they knew this basic information, there was so much more dental health to learn about. After their discussion about dental health we discovered they wanted to learn about fillings, how to properly brush their teeth and why, why do we use mouthwash, how do we get rotten teeth and finally why do our gums bleed when we floss. I then began researching how to teach these topics of what the students wanted to learn more about.
Phase Two I developed a variety of lessons to help teach about dental health. I got some great visual aids from the school nurse which I used throughout my lessons. Some of the visual aids I used throughout the lessons were a model of a mouth with teeth for types of teeth, model of parts of the tooth when learning the parts of the tooth, and a big tooth brush when I taught proper techniques of brushing.
The first lesson I begun with a story titled, “I know why I brush my teeth” by Kate Rowen. This book was very informative with great information about our teeth. I used the visual aid of the mouth while we discussed in more detail about the types of teeth and the purpose of these types. While we discussed this the students were engaged in a worksheet where they were coloring the various types as discussed. The next lesson involved learning about the parts of a tooth. This lesson also began with a book titled, “Arthur tricks the tooth fairy”, by Marc Brown. This was a fun book about the tooth fairy to get the students transitioned and settled in for the lesson. I used the visual aid of the model of the tooth while we discussed in more detail about the parts of the tooth and their purpose. While we discussed this the students were engaged in a worksheet where they were coloring the various parts of the tooth as we discussed them
The next lesson was not taught at one time. As it was a science experiment. One students question was, “Why our teeth rot?” This science experiment addressed this topic well. We began with explaining we were going to learn about how our teeth rot. I explained what a hypothesis is and how to develop one. As the class we created a hypothesis. This experiment was an egg in vinegar for over 24 hours. The egg represented a tooth with the shell representing the enamel of a tooth. The vinegar represented the bacteria in our mouth and what happens when bacteria is left in our mouth for a long period of time. The students thought this activity was really cool. We continued checking on our egg throughout the day.
The next lesson was introducing flossing. The students watched a video about flossing our teeth and why we floss. We then discussed about what we learned in the video about the importance of flossing and the proper techniques of how to floss our teeth. To conclude this lesson we then applied what we had learned and practiced flossing using string and egg crates as a representation of our teeth.
The next lesson began with a video about the proper techniques to use to brush our teeth. The students enjoyed this video. The students and I discussed the purpose of why we brush our teeth and proper techniques of brushing our teeth. To conclude this lesson the students applied what they learned by brushing egg crates as a model of their teeth with paint on tooth brushes so they could see what they brushed. I also played a song about brushing their teeth so they would know if they brushed long enough, the song was two minutes long. The students enjoyed this activity of applying what they learned in a fun way. We also learned a teeth brushing song to sing too.
Next, we performed another science experiment to represent why we brush for two minutes. This experiment included an egg and coca-cola soda. The egg was the representation of our teeth and what happens when soda stains our teeth. This experiment took 24 hours as well. We checked our egg throughout the day and the next morning we tried brushing our egg as we would our teeth. We brushed for just less than a minute to show the students what happens when we don’t brush long enough. Then we played our song about teeth brushing for the two minutes to demonstrate how clean our egg can become when brushing for the proper amount of time and using our techniques we learned. This was a great way to apply what we learned.
For our final lesson we had a learned how math can be related to our dental health. We had a worksheet with some word problems to solve, which we did as a class. This represented how math is included even in our everyday lives.
To conclude all that we learned about dental health, the school had a dental hygienist come to speak to the students. She spoke to the students about how to floss and brush our teeth and the importance of this, what happens when we don’t do these things. By having this speaker come after the students learned this was beneficial because it reinforced what they learned.
Phase three The students shared what they learned by writing two papers to display in the hallway. They wrote a paper about the importance of dental flossing and why they should floss. This paper had also a model of their mouth that they made themselves and stapled to the top of the paper. The other paper the students wrote about was the steps of brushing their teeth. This paper also had a model of their finished brushing their teeth activity. These papers were also a way I could assess what they learned by them applying what they learned and how to apply it by sharing it with others. We also revisited our KWL chart and discussed what we learned about.