Clinical Interview 1, Clinical Interview 2

Clinical Interview 1

Reflection

     The purpose of this interview was to discover any misconceptions a student might have about ecosystems. My original plan was to interview a fourth grade student but the plans changed. My student was in the first grade and we will call her “Sally”. Based on my GEMS Unit: Aquatic Habitats, I wanted to check for basic understanding of Ecosystems and more specifically, general knowledge of food chains and/or food webs.

     I opened by asking Sally if she had spent any time at Town Lake (a large urban lake in town) and what types of life forms she might find there. She named trees, plants, ducks, fish, pigeons and turtles. She did spend a little extra time naming plant life to include poison ivy. I proceeded with how these life forms interact. She then asked me if I wanted her to draw a food chain. I thought that was pretty intuitive since I hadn’t mentioned food chains at this point.

     Sally’s food chain was interesting. She drew a duck, a fish and a turtle with arrows point from the duck to the fish and from the turtle to the fish. I asked her to describe what she had drawn. She told me that “the duck eats the fish and the turtle eats the fish.” When I repeated what she had said back to her, she thought about it for a second and then added a fourth item to her chain. She then explained that “the duck eats the fish, the turtle eats the fish and they all eat the bread.”

     For a child in the first grade, she has the basic concept of a food chain. That it is a way that life forms are connected to each other. Her description included only the animal forms of the food chain. It is important that she becomes more aware of the role of plants, water and smaller microorganisms in the food chain.

Interview Questions page 1

Interview questions page 2

Student Drawing 1

Student Drawing 2

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Clinical Interview 2

Misconception: How do fish breathe?

The student is a first grader, who has just been introduced to the subject of science in his classroom this year.I wanted to discuss his understanding of how fish breathe, since this relates to a portion of lesson three in the GEMS Guide being studied.

Look at the drawing of the fish and circle where the fish breathes from (takes in and releases air).

Response: Student circles mouth

Explain why you circled the _mouth.                                                                                                                                  

Response: Fish breathe in and out through their mouths

How do you know a fish breathes through its mouth?

Response: Because that is how I breathe in and out.And I breathe in and out from my nose, but fish don’t have noses, so they probably breathe only out of their mouths.

Discuss correct answer (see below).

Our lungs take oxygen that we need from the air we breathe in.Fish need oxygen too, but they do not breathe air with lungs.Instead, they make water flow over body structures called gills.The gills take in oxygen from the water.(GEMS Guide, 2008)

*Show student where gills are located on the fish drawing

A fish breathes by absorbing oxygen from the water it drinks.Water flows into the mouth, through the gills, and out of the body through the gill slits.As water flows through the gills, the oxygen it contains passes into blood circulating through gill structures called filaments and lamellae.At the same time, carbon dioxide in the fish’s bloodstream passes into the water and is carried out of the body. (MSN Encarta, 2008)

Would you change any of your answers?

Response: Yeah, I would say that a fish breathes out of the gills.The water goes in past the gills and the fish gets the air it needs to breath.So I think the fish breathes by using its mouth and its gills, because water goes in the mouth and through the gills.

Reflection

I chose my topic based on its relation to lesson three in the GEMS Guide being studied.I decided to ask the student the question of how fish breathe, because it is a question that I feel many students would have misconceptions about. Since gills are specifically related to fish and are not a part commonly found on other animals, students may not have had any exposure to them.This inquiry also provided a starting point for this student to learn about the different parts of a fish.

As part of my interview, I felt it would be beneficial to explain the breathing process of a fish in relation to how a human breathes, since this is how the student rationalized his answer.He explained to me that fish must breathe through their mouths, since this is how he breathes.From this I came to understand that he developed his answer based on his own personal experience with breathing.While his answer was partially correct, I felt it necessary to explain about gills since they are an important component in the breathing process of a fish.I think it is very important to start from a place that students are familiar with, in this case the child’s own physiology, so that he may be able to connect his prior knowledge to his new knowledge.

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