This week in 6th grade science, we began to think about what we need to see. At first, the only three things we agreed on were that you need an object to see, you need to be alive, and that you need to have eyes. Two other things we brainstormed that not everyone was convinced on was the fact that we need light to see and we need the object in view/unblocked. As a result, we decided that the only way to determine if these two things were really needed would be to test them.

To test if we need light to see our whole class filed into a tiny room where we put dark pieces of paper over any places light could shine through. Students were asked to look for and SEE the red marker container in the room. Needless to say, those who weren’t sure if we needed light to see quickly changed their minds once the lights were turned off and we could not see a single thing! I think we all ran into multiple things as we tried to walk around the room haha 🙂

To test if the object needs to be in view/unlocked to see it, students were asked to try and see objects that were placed around the room just by turning their necks and not moving their bodies. Students realized that they could only see the objects that were in view.

By the end of these two tests we were able to add two more things we need to see. Our final list looked as shown below:

To see we need…

• to be alive
• light
• an object
• the object in view and unblocked
• eyes

This then brought us to the next piece of the puzzle: thinking about HOW we see. Students were asked in groups to create a model about how they think we see. I was so impressed with the work the kids put into their models and their explanations of what their models showed. After each group had shared their model, we looked for similarities and differences between them to develop a class consensus model. Again, we only put things in our class model that every student agreed on. Moving forward, we will continue to develop this model as we discover new information. I am excited to see this process unfold!

Have a wonderful weekend!