At the beginning of my lesson, I noticed my students were struggling to follow the science cycle in order. When we were trying to create a question, many students wanted to write a hypothesis. I decided at that point to review the SMERT acronym to remind students how to write a scientific question. Once we had an idea for a question, I asked the students to refer to SMERT to see if the question we wrote was usable for the science circle. I noticed my students were struggling to understand how our question, without yet knowing our methods, could fit into the SMERT acronym. I reminded my students that there are a variety of methods that we could use to address this question. I gave a few ideas and asked my students to think of some ideas themselves. This seemed to help some of my students frame their thinking around the SMERT question. One student continued to struggle understanding how our question fit into the SMERT acronym without knowing our exact methods. I could visibly see him becoming frustrated not knowing our direction. I decided that it was best to be clear with this student and I explained some potential methods we could use to test our hypotheses. After that conversation, the student seemed much more comfortable discussing the question and hypotheses.
Another formative assessment I had planned was asking my students to list the methods for our experiment in their scientific notebook. Most of my students did not get an opportunity to attempt this in their notebooks due to time constraints. I had one student who did not enjoy assembling the track tubes. I gave this student the task of writing up the methods for how to make the tubes. The student struggled to go into detail about the procedure. Unfortunately, I did not have extra time in my lesson to address this. I plan to include an activity where students must teach an alien how to make a track tube at the beginning of my next lesson.