Final Observation

Image 1                                                  Image 2                                                  Image 3

-Plants have continued to slightly grow; some leaves are beginning to dry. See Image 1

-A leaf is at the bottom where the soil is. It is filled with fungus. Perhaps because of the ideal temperature of the ecosystem; the moisture, the heat, warmth, humidity is high. 

-Condensation appears on only half of upper side of bottle, this demonstrates that our wick is working. See Image 1

-Roots have continued to grow on Elodea See Image 3

-There appears to be one large Daphnia and about 9 small ones, evidence that we have clean water.

-Elevation of soil has not changed

-The root growing at the top on one of the Elodea has turned from red to light brown. See Image 2 & 3

-The wick looks like it has continued to wither.

-Both snails are at the bottom of our ecosystem where the pebbles are.

-What level does not appear to have changed since our last observation. See Image 3

-The semi-large baby snails, that we observed last week, do not appear at the roots of the elodea anymore, they could have possible fallen off to the bottom where the pebbles are. Currently, numerous miniature snails appear at the roots of the elodea.

Now that we have come to our last observation, we have been able to see how science can be taught in a constructivist manner by using this dual-level ecosystem. With our weekly observations we have been able to take on the role as scientists and document our data and reflect on the scientific process that have occurred within our ecosystem. These observations also allowed for us to be able to predict and hypothesize what we would observe in our future observations.

In our textbook, the constructivist manner of teaching requires the students to take on this role as scientist so that they can learn how to actually "do science" and not just have a directed teaching approach in which the teacher delivers the information. Just as the textbook also explains, we were able stray away from this directed teaching approach and lean more towards the constructivist manner. By inquiring about what would happen and take place in our ecosystem and having this hands-on approach not only allowed us to experiment with this ecosystem (such as choosing the type of seeds to plant, or if we wanted snails or shrimp) but it also made it easier for us to learn about the process of science by actually doing the process of science. This experience of observing this dual-level ecosystem has served as a real life example and a realistic way in which science teachers can successfully incorporate constructivist teaching in the classroom!