Science Ideas for 2/1/2016

Engineering edition. Engineering is the process of design.  We design tons of things for many reasons, and incorporate many different disciplines in the process. It’s great in the classroom because it doesn’t require feedback from the teacher – the students test their design, and learn from evidence they observe, not from the teacher.  Then they make changes to see if they can make it more successful.  (This is called “iterative” design, which means repeating.) Engineering is coming in the new science standards, and this week, I’ll give you an idea for a simple engineering project for your grade level that supports your current science standard.  Make it easy, and do a quick 20 minute lesson on it, or take it into a weeklong exploration.  Either way, I promise your kids will learn a lot about the standard at hand.

Kindergarten Engineering – We’re just starting to look at night/day and the effects of the sun’s heat on the planet.  Take a look at this engineering challenge – it examines the effect of color on the melting of an ice cube:  https://www.teachengineering.org/view_activity.php?url=collection/wpi_/activities/wpi_colors_absorb_heat_better/colors_absorb_heat_better.xml

I have a heat lamp if you want to borrow one – not a lot of sun forecast for the next two weeks.  Here’s my spin that makes that more of an engineering challenge: You have one piece of paper.  You can cut, tape, glue, whatever.  How can you use your piece of paper to keep your ice cube from melting the longest?  Or melt the quickest?  That would be interesting up through 6^th grade, actually.

First Grade – Here’s an indicator: “Analyze the individual similarities and differences within and across larger groups.” Look at your class as a “population” or “larger group.”  Choose a characteristic that varies across that population, like shoe size.  Have the kids design something that would work for “most” 1^st graders, like an adjustable roller skate.  In doing so, they’ll have to take a critical look at how that characteristic varies across that population, how it’s the same, and how it’s different.  Less likely that you’ll be able to test this one, but it’s the best idea I had!

Second Grade Engineering – From the core: “Sort rocks based upon color, hardness, texture, layering, particle size and type (i.e. igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary).”  Have the kids design a way to sort rocks.  We can go by any characteristic they notice.  The key here is we’re trying to get them to notice the different things have in common, and what makes they different.  Designing systems is certainly a form of engineering!  Does their system help us tell rocks apart?  Can another student use that system and get similar results when sorting the same group of rocks? 

Third Grade Engineering – Simple machines lend themselves so easily to engineering.  Here’s your indicator: “Investigate how forces applied through simple machines affect the direction and/or amount of resulting force.” Have the kids design a way to use at least two simple machines to move something moderately heavy (like a handcover book) 1m sideways and 1m up or down inside your classroom.

Fourth Grade Engineering – “Describe the water cycle.”  So many things would work great here.  Design a solution to maximize or minimize evaporation, or condensation.  Actually build them, and test them. Design a way to collect rainwater.  How about a way to filter water.  For more advanced students, engineer a model that shows all three phase changes of water, or all the various “ation” words within the water cycle. Go nuts.

Fifth Grade Engineering – To cap off changes in matter, have them engineer a way to prove conservation of matter in any of the following situations: vinegar and baking soda reacting in a soda bottle, melting a snowball, burning a birthday candle, or growing a plant.  They could actually build these things (no flames in class) or draw their designs.  This would require more teacher input, but they will come away with an incredibly deep understanding of the process.  Especially the plant one.  Bonus points for any teacher who can figure that one out.

Sixth Grade Engineering – To finish up with the moon, have the students engineer a way to track the moon’s motion across the sky through one day.  “Compare how objects in the sky (the moon, planets, stars) change in relative position over the course of the day or night.”  My solution was the soda straw modeling clay thing, I’d love to see what your students can come up with. A stonehenge?  Marks on a window?  You’ll be surprised how deeply this problem makes them think about the motion of the moon.  Test those designs!  See if they actually work.

Enjoy, and see me with any questions or for clarification!

Science Ideas for 1/25/2016

Howdy teachers!  I gotta tell you – I’m reading this new book on anti-gravity.  I can’t put it down.  Just kidding, onto science.  Lots of grade levels get to start new standards this week according to the pacing map, so this email will be a doozey.

Kindergarten – We’re on to k.4.2 – “Describe the parts of living things.” Lots to do here!  Just do you know, in later grades they’ll be focusing on how these different parts offer survival advantages to these living things, so keep that in the back of your mind as you’re putting this together.  Here’s a great excerpt from the Supplemental Material from the USOE: “ Have students compare/contrast the differences and similarities between animal structures. Ask them to investigate using the following questions (and others that you or your students choose):

Do all animals look the same? What are the major differences between specific types of animals? (ex. Compare a duck to a snake to a dog)”   

First Grade Ideas – We’re looking at a related objective in 1^st grade, 1.4.1: “Communicate observations about the similarities and differences between offspring and between populations.”  So the offspring are the animal’s young, and the population being the group as a whole.  Indicator (a) gets more specific: “Communicate observations about plants and animals, including humans, and how they resemble their parents.”  Here’s another good idea from the Supplemental Material, again from the USOE: “Students can create a family tree poster with photographs or drawings (FA). Working in groups, students can identify similarities and differences in characteristics when comparing offspring to parents and siblings to siblings.”

Second Grade Ideas – Rocks!  I’m jealous – teaching rocks is a blast.  Let’s look at this objective: “Describe the characteristics of different rocks.”  Pretty straight forward.  I like to start with this indicator: “Describe rocks in terms of their parts (e.g. crystals, grains, cement).” It  builds some common language for other indicators.  Here is some background knowledge for you teachers.  Don’t think about rocks as cold lumps sitting here on the table - think about rocks as having a story.  They were formed possibly billions of years ago, they have undergone changes, and now they’re here.  The rock itself holds many clues about its story.  Unfortunately for your classroom, the location where it was found also has a huge part to play in telling that story.  When a rock sample is removed from its location, we lose some of that information, which is ok, but just realize that.  So it’s pretty hard to answer the question: “what kind of rock is this?” when a child brings you one she found on the playground.  But we can start to look for clues, and we can notice a whole lot of interesting things about that rock, even if we can’t say for certain that it’s quartzite.  If you’re not comfortable with the three kinds of rocks: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic, read here: http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/igneous-sedimentary-metamorphic-rocks/  So a lot of that language – crystals, layers, grains, cement, it’s part of this idea of story.  Here’s the activity, from the Supplemental Material: “Using age‐appropriate tools (magnifying glass, water, sandpaper, hammer), students can examine rock samples and describe their parts. The products could include: drawings, charts, journals, or classroom books.” If you’re going to use hammers, see me for some safety glasses.

Third Grade Ideas – Don’t miss the cool PD with Clark Planetarium on Tuesday Feb 9^th at Rose Park at 4:30. You should have gotten an email about it, but if you didn’t, let me know.  This week we’re wrapping up forces, motion, and gravity.  Review that stronger (or larger) forces cause a greater change in the object they’re affecting.  This can be from a harder push, or a faster push, or a push from a more massive thing.  Gravity is a force we have to overcome if we want to go up.  And gravity pulls everything back down, towards the center of the Earth.  The more mass something has, the stronger gravity pulls, so we say it has more weight.  With gravity, distance matters.  So if we get far enough away from Earth, its gravitational pull diminishes.  (It’s an inverse square law, for the math nerds.  Thanks, Newton!)  Bonus points: everything has a gravitational pull of its own, proportional to its mass.  So you have gravity!  So does that paper clip.  Just not very much.

Fourth Grade Ideas – Water Cycle.  Does it get any better in 4^th grade?  Not for my money.  Let’s look at this indicator: “Locate examples of evaporation and condensation in the water cycle (e.g., water evaporates when heated and clouds or dew forms when vapor is cooled).”  Let’s start with the most concrete, in my opinion: evaporation.  Leave out a pan of water, and to no one’s surprise, it evaporates.  For a little more fun, do two pans, one with fresh water and one with salt water.  Compare the two pans after evaporation.  Or place two identical pans in two different locations and compare rates of evaporation.  Or if you want something else that’s cool, evaporate water next to some rubbing alcohol.  Notice the difference.  So we established that the water is evaporating, what next?  Discuss how water can turn into a gas.  It’s hard for kids to get this, because they won’t have solid/liquid/gas until 5^th grade, but that’s what’s going on. We can’t see this water vapor – it’s invisible.  If you think you’re seeing water vapor, like steam or fog, you’re actually seeing little drops of liquid water that have condensed from the gaseous form back to the liquid, and are now suspended in the air.  But that’s a liquid. The amount of water vapor that air can “hold” depends on its temperature.  So a change in temperature will cause the gaseous water vapor to change into liquid.  Imagine a hot air balloon that’s losing altitude – jettison some cargo!  That cargo would be analogous to our water, and it falls as condensation.  Warm air hits your cold soda can, and as the air cools, some of its water vapor turns to liquid.  The mechanisms behind all this have everything to do with temperature as a measure of average molecular energy.  

Fifth Grade Ideas – Changes in Matter.  Last week, we looked at conservation of matter – that it cannot be created nor destroyed.  This week, we’ll tackle a bigger: chemical vs. physical changes.  Here’s all the stuff from the core:

Evaluate evidence that indicates a physical change has occurred.

a.           Identify the physical properties of matter (e.g., hard, soft, solid, liquid, gas).

b.           Compare changes in substances that indicate a physical change has occurred.

c.           Describe the appearance of a substance before and after a physical change.

Investigate evidence for changes in matter that occur during a chemical reaction.

a.           Identify observable evidence of a chemical reaction (e.g., color change, heat or light given off, heat absorbed, gas given off).

b.           Explain why the measured weight of a remaining product is less than its reactants when a gas is produced.

c.           Cite examples of chemical reactions in daily life.

d.           Compare a physical change to a chemical change.

e.           Hypothesize how changing one of the materials in a chemical reaction will change the results.

There’s a lot there, and I’m sure you have lots of activities to do to demonstrate both types of changes.  So I’ll focus on the background knowledge that’ll help you teach these things.  First, chemical changes mean a new chemical is created.  Sometimes this is easy to observe – vinegar and making soda produce carbon dioxide.  But for kids, sometimes something looks like a new chemical when in fact it’s not.  Ice and liquid water seem like totally different chemicals, so a kid might conclude that ice melting means a new chemical is created.  So that’s what you’re up against – building up that large body of background knowledge about different chemicals. Most physical changes are pretty obviously not creating something new – gluing paper together, or breaking a glass.  The ones that are trickier tend to be phase changes.  In phase changes (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, etc.) something a little more mysterious seems to be going on, because the properties of that material change so dramatically.  Just play with that stuff a lot, and go back to their knowledge about the water cycle.  We’ll cover phase changes a little bit more next week because there are some key things I want to discuss about the nature of temperature.  But that should be enough for this week.  See me if you need some examples or demos.

Sixth Grade Ideas – Just in time for the end of your unit on the solar system, they found a 9^th planet!  Sorta.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/science/space/ninth-planet-solar-system-beyond-pluto.html?_r=0  Talking about how they “discovered” it is a perfect example of: “Describe the role of computers in understanding the solar system.”  Doesn’t get much better than that!  I hope all those Pluto boo-hooers feel better now. In other news, I have the lenses to build a primitive but functional Galilean Telescope.  That accomplishes this: “Describe the use of instruments to observe and explore the moon and planets.” And these: “Relate science's understanding of the solar system to the technology used to investigate it. Find and report on ways technology has been and is being used to investigate the solar system.” Give me a specific time and date and we’ll set it up.  If we do it in the first week of February, we can look at the moon because it’ll be up in the morning then.

Science Ideas for 1/11/2016

Kindergarten – “Compare and contrast young plants and animals with their parents.”  This one’s pretty straight forward – babies and adults.  Lots to do here, especially with the baby animals that don’t look like their parents – such as frogs, caterpillars, etc.  If you want to go the inquiry route, you could have the kids research what a baby animal looks like, what the adults look like, and compare and contrast them.  They could learn if the babies are oviparous or viviparous, if their mothers stay with them, etc. 

First Grade – “Indicator 1. Observe and record how objects move in different ways, e.g., fast, slow, zigzag, round and round, up and down, straight line, back and forth, slide, roll, bounce, spin, swing, float, and glide.” This is a great time of year for sink or float. This is actually a rich and fascinating topic with much more complexity than we usually give it credit for.  Look here for some discussion, framed around common misconceptions: https://www.ied.edu.hk/apfslt/v6_issue1/costu/costu5.htm

Second Grade – With another storm possibly moving through this weekend, it’s a great time to wrap up weather.  Do some more outside observations of temperature, etc.  Here’s one of our indicators: “Analyze and interpret data such as temperatures in different locations and different times. “ Take a look at this climograph:

http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate-on-your-site.php?id=usut0225

It’s a little dense for second graders, but you can find some trends together.  Start simple – which months are hottest, and which are coldest?  Just for fun, does precipitation seem related to temperature?  Look at the image below.  What can we see about temperature differences across the state?  Why do you think we get that “finger” of cooler weather that goes diagonally down across the state?  I’ll write the answer here backwards: (Sniatnuom eht!) 

Third Grade – A little more gravity. Examine the fact that a ball rolled off a table and a ball dropped from the same height will hit the floor at the exact same time.  This is counter intuitive for the kids – they’ll think the ball with sideways motion would take longer to hit the floor, because it’s… moving.  But the sideways motion has no effect whatsoever on the speed at which it falls. 

Another example would be to “shoot” a rubber band off your finger, and drop one at the same time.  Which one lands first?  It’s a tie!  Or shoot a nerf dart exactly level, and drop a nerf dart from the same height at the same time.  It’s a little tricky to get your data, but they should hit at exactly the same time. 

You can now shoot that nerf dart straight up in the air.  Maybe in the gym.  Look at the fact that it was fighting gravity for its whole flight up.  If it had enough force, and could push itself far enough away from the Earth, eventually the force of gravity would lessen as the distance increased.  This is how a rocket can break free of Earth’s gravity – it takes a lot of force to get up there!

One other mind blower about gravity – every particle of matter has a gravitational pull.  So while the Earth is pulling on us, we’re all pulling back on the Earth.  The pull is proportional to our mass, so as you can imagine, it’s infinitesimal.  But the moon pulls on Earth too, with a force that’s not infinitesimal.  That pull is partially responsible for the tides, for example.  But there’s nothing special about a planet that gives it gravity.  Every single thing in the universe has a gravitational pull.  It just doesn’t add up to much, unless it’s a pretty massive body.  And really massive things have much more gravity, like a star.  

Fourth Grade – I’m going to point you to an incredibly useful pool of resources from the SETS PD coordinated by my esteemed colleague, Candace Penrod.  I won’t pretend to be able to communicate everything about their effectiveness in a short email, but start exploring and see what’s there.  I’ll draw your attention to one piece at a time to start sorting through, and this week, it’s the geologic time powerpoint.  Find it here:

http://www.slcschools.org/departments/curriculum/science/Fossilsst4.php#.VpUfl3bnsgs

Here’s the link to the rest of it: http://www.slcschools.org/departments/curriculum/science/SETSPD.php#.VpUhZ3bnsgt

As you can see, fifth grade is already starting to accumulate info for their upcoming cohort.

Fifth Grade – Changes in matter!  This unit is great fun, and there’s a lot here.  Let’s bite off this little piece, which is Objective 1: “Describe that matter is neither created nor destroyed even though it may undergo change.” Talk about profound truths of science.  Let me know if you need to borrow little digital scales to play with this idea.  There are so many ways to do it – dissolve a little salt in water, watch it disappear, but notice that the mass is still there.  Go grab a bowl of snow, (cover with plastic wrap so you don’t lose any to evaporation) and watch the mass stay exactly the same as it melts.  Drop half an alka-seltzer tablet in a tiny water bottle with a bit of water inside, and watching the mass drop as it dissolves and the gas escapes.  Then do it again, and capture the gas with a balloon.  No drop in mass.  Do a few simple ones like weighing 5-6 lego blocks, then snapping them together and seeing that it’s the same mass.  Take them apart, weigh them again, still the same.  Talk about a few examples where it looks like matter is destroyed, like burning a birthday candle.  Pretty much all those examples have the matter escaping as a gas.  There you have it – conservation of matter.

Sixth Grade – If you need one more piece to wrap up your solar system unit, check this out.  This one is from Kearney District in Missouri, though I’ve seen many like it.  It’s a simulation where the kids create a travel brochure for a planet in our solar system, and gather a lot of knowledge to do so.  See this link:

http://elearning.kearney.k12.mo.us/~thomast/PlanetBrochureProject.html

They’ll need lots of information like its distance from the sun, atmosphere, etc.  It’s a fun way to get them engaged.

That’s it for this week!  Science on.