al-mofhariz

Yesterday I talked about how we practiced writing up an investigation.  Today I am going to tell you how we did it for "real."
I started by telling the children that today's work was something I was going to count for a grade.  I explained to them that we have been working on guided investigations for a while and now was the time for them to create their own investigation.  I posted the rules on the whiteboard:
You will need to have 1. a question to test 2.  a prediction 3. a plan 4. some written data 5. a conclusion such as "Today I learned...."

       I told the students that they would be working in their science groups on this task.  Each child would be expected to work together, but each notebook would be graded individually.  They are pretty familiar with the Science Notebook Rubric that I have and so they were well aware of my expectations. Before we started I helped them brainstorm some ideas to test with their electromagnets - changing the way we wind the coi…

Practice...

I just finished watching my son play in a championship basketball game for his U9 team at the YMCA.  As I watched, I thought we never could have gotten here without the specific and targeted practices each week.  The coach watched each player and would have them practice what they needed.  Some may practice free throws, some layups, and some defense.  But put it all together, and we won many basketball games.  Not bad for a child who had never played before!

Now, why am I telling you this? So often I think we expect kids to perform to high expectations without the practice it takes to get there. 

In my classroom we have been working on building electromagnets and we were ready to move to the next step - designing your own investigation.  I wanted them to be able to think of the question, make a prediction, record their data and write a conclusion on their own.  But before we could do this, we needed to practice. 

I set up the practice session by telling them I wanted them to…

Valentine's Day is usually spent with a lot of fun and games.  Let's be honest....not a whole lot of academic teaching goes on in an elementary classroom on these days.  At our school we do something called "Math Matters" day.  We rotate through all five classroom playing math games with a valentines spin.  However, in my classroom....sciencegal likes to do something related to science instead. 

I am lucky enough to have a Smart Board in my classroom while the other classrooms do not.  So I thought, why not combine the Smart Board with science? We are doing Jump Rope for heart in PE....so why not enrich them with a little 30 minute explanation about our real heart.

I found a great website:  http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/

This website is developed to explain How the Body Works.  Click on the heart and you will get:

a moviearticles for kidsa quiza word find (that you can print)activities (this interactive diagram - which will be great on the smart board!)

You Gotta Love it When....

Today one of my students surprised me with a true inquiry experiments.  We have been working on testing out the force of magnetism as it relates to distances.  We have completed one of my favorite lessons called Breaking the Force.  In this lesson we have used spacers between two magnets on a balance scale to measure how many washers will break the force. 

So today, Jordan was done with his math and had about 5 minutes of free time.  I walked over and saw he had taken a ruler (centimeter side) and taped it onto the table.  He had a paper clip on the desk and was holding the magnet along the ruler.  I walked over to see what he was doing and he said, "I wanted to measure to see how far a magnet should be from the paper clip to attract.  Huh...it has to be at 1 cm distance to work."  I asked him what he wanted to do next and he said, now I want to put two magnets together and see how far away I can hold it."  

Wow...you gotta love it when they sp…

Here's a fun activity that I did on Enrichment Day at our school.


My school has been reading Eric Jensen's book Teaching with Poverty in Mind.   In the book, Jensen talks about making sure that we are enriching our students minds - through art, music, woodworking, dance, crafts, etc... Our students were given the choice to sign up for two classes ranging from chess to hip-hop dancing.  I, naturally, taught a science course and had 20 eager second and third graders who were so excited to investigate. 

I had bought some Worm Goo from Steve Spangler at http://www.stevespanglerscience.com// You can buy all different kinds - blue, green, red, black...even glow in the dark for about $6.99.  Not a bad price for a ton of fun!


We started off the day watching some of Steve's videos on You Tube from when he was on the Ellen show.  The kids giggled and were amazed as we watched all the things he had to show us.  Trust me...some of the things he does are crazy!!

Then we explored:



As you c…

Wow...we had so much fun with this today! Thanks again to my friend Sherrie Roland for sharing this with me in a time of need!!!

First I read from the Seeds of Science book and YouTube video clips that I posted on the blog yesterday. Then we explored our candy!
 I bought a huge pack of Wonka candy.... with Nerds, BottleCaps, Sweet Tarts and Laffy Taffy in it.  We were able to see a reaction with all of the candy types except for the banana flavored Laffy Taffy.  I wonder if it wasn't sour enough?


The reason for the reaction?  Sour candy is made with citric acid from fruits like lime/lemons.  When you mix the candy diluted in water with baking soda, it emits a gas.  It only emits the gas if it encounters an acid.

We made a lot of observations - we noticed that a lot of the food coloring from the candy was diluted in the water.  We noticed that the baking soda sunk and made clumps on the candy.  We noticed many bubbles. Nerds made the most bubbles. 

 Here is how I set up the materia…