On Monday, I had a fascinating conversation with the First Graders about living and non-living things.  During a prior science class we had gone outside and collected objects from nature to bring back into the classroom. Our task Monday was to classify the objects as either “living” or “non-living”.  (I also threw in a few man-made materials to spice up the discussion.)

Leaves, rocks, twigs, pinecones, acorns, a quarter, and pieces of paper with the words “cloud”, “wind” and “tree”:  Students were presented with one object at a time and discussed together which category the item should go in. I told students that, for right now,  there were no right or wrong answers.  The discussion and the thinking behind the discussion were more important than the results.

Here is some of what I heard:

Living things grow, breathe, have brains and hearts, are able to move by themselves, “make stuff”, come from the earth, maintain their shape, are able to die and are able to be heard and felt.

The rock generated a lot of discussion. One student felt that the rock should go in the living category.  She said that something that is dying or dead gets smaller and collapses in on itself.  She reasoned that because rocks always keep their same shape, there must be something living inside the rock that helps it keep its shape.   Wow, here is a student engaged in scientific thinking!  She is making observations of the world around her. (And good observations, too.  The very old do seem to shrink into themselves a little bit.  And I see rings of bark encircling decaying trees all the time.) She is also using the information at her disposal to make a hypothesis.  When you think about it, this is what grown up scientists do everyday.