Are early-years-children able to use magnifying glasses and dichotomous keys to observe, compare, classify and identify small animals?

ABSTRACT

This article presents research designed along one scholar course with first-year pre-schoolers in Spain. A coherent sequence of learning activities, that combined classroom work with working outside the classroom (in the school garden), was designed in order to analyse if the first-year-preschool children were able to apply scientific tools, including the magnifying glass and dichotomous key to observe, compare, classify and identify small animals within their surroundings. The results obtained show that using a magnifying glass, pupils learned to observe in an intentional way to, by means of counting the number of wings and legs and the colour of small animals, compare small animals. The comparison criteria they established based on this observation and comparison, were used to classify and identify other animals by using a dichotomous key. The results show that the students struggled to use keys; thus, help from the teacher was necessary to develop scientific skills as observe, compare, classify and identify.

KEYWORDS:

• Biology education
• dichotomous keys
• motivation
• science learning
• small animals

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the school “Colegio Santa Ana” in Zaragoza for its involvement in this project, and the MINECO EDU2016-76743-P project for supporting this study, as well as the BEAGLE group and the IUCA Research Institute, both of the University of Zaragoza. We also thank to the reviewers because their comments have contributed to improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

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