Science Ideas for 4/29/2016

This week, I’ve got an important idea, and then concrete resources.  First, the idea.

We’re shifting science education from “learning about” to “figuring out.”  It’s a quick question you can ask yourself about the fundamental structure of any lesson – are the kids learning about things, or are they figuring things out?  The difference is subtle, but it’s everything.

When it’s possible, make sure the kids are the ones figuring out.  That takes longer, and that’s okay.  We can’t shortcut that process.  We can try – we can try to “cover” more material.  But just because I said something in a classroom doesn’t mean anyone heard it. 

Now not everything can be “figured out.”  If you’re teaching base level facts, or things that cannot be observed in the classroom, but all means explain it.  But if it’s possible for the students to construct the explanation themselves, the learning is very different.

So I was just “teaching about” a new idea.  Maybe a little got through to you? But it mostly won’t.  Until you “figure it out” within your own terms.  I think that’s so interesting.  My medium here, email, is limited in that regard.

On to resources! I am constantly scouring the world for resources for you.  This week, I found a doozey.  Some of you are already probably familiar with this, but check out Jordan District’s collection of science lesson plans:

http://departments.jordandistrict.org/curriculum/science/elementary/sciencecurriculummapping/index.html

There are links for K-6, but I found K-3 to be empty.  The goods start in 4^th.  These lessons are comprehensive – if you teach them, you will “cover” all indicators in the core. You can rearrange the order to fit our district’s pacing map.  The one catch – many lessons are great, some are good, and some need modification.  But it’s easier to rework a lesson that already exists instead of starting from scratch.  So this is a tremendous resource! 

Science Ideas for 4/15/2016

This week, I want to focus on the idea that science is not a body of knowledge.  Well, it is that.  But more importantly, science is a way of finding things out. I am less interested in what our kids “know” by the end of the year.  I am much more interesting in how we’ve developed their skills in finding things out. 

In their future careers, 99% of them will not need to know squat about the shape of the Earth’s magnetic field.  And if they do, they’ll google it. Would I like them to know?  Of course.  But there are tens of thousands of things I’d like them to know.  And unfortunately, our time with these kids is not infinite.  So we’ve got to choose our battles.  Also, we must make kids good at finding out things that no one has before.  These problems cannot be googled, and there is only one appropriate way to solve them: test, gather data, and draw conclusions.  That is science, and that is what we’re going to emphasize this week. 

As many of you have already finished covering your science content in preparation for SAGE, I’ll look back to your whole year’s core for ideas this week.  These ideas will just be questions, and some of them are a little vague.  That’s okay, because remember, we’re not as interested in the answer as we are in the process.

On to the ideas:

Kindergarten Ideas: Can the weather today help us predict the weather tomorrow?

First Grade Ideas: What path does the sun follow across the sky?

Second Grade Ideas: Do heavy things fall faster or slower than light things?

Third Grade Ideas: How does a particular simple machine change the amount of force applied?

Fourth Grade Ideas: How long does it take to water to evaporate?

Fifth Grade Ideas: How does the density of water change as it changes phases?

Sixth Grade Ideas: How does the insulation of a dry sock compare to a wet sock?

Teaching Kids to Love Fishing

We all know the one about "Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish..."

What if fish represented science knowledge?  I know, but just go with me here for a sec.

We can only "give" a certain amount of science knowledge between August and June.  And it isn't very much.

So we teach them to fish - to pursue and generate their own science knowledge.  We teach questioning, data, analysis... Once we're not around any more, they can keep growing their knowledge.  They can keep finding fish.

But will they?

What if teaching them to love fishing is the most important piece of the whole thing?

That's not going to be on the SAGE test, by the way. 

Science Ideas for 4/8/2016

Investigations.  That’s where I want to focus this week – how can we get kids to design an investigation, gather data, then draw conclusions by arguing from evidence?  Use the investigation to explore part of your science core, but the focus is not on what you can “cover” by doing this activity.  It’s about the investigation itself.  Grade level ideas below!

See all ideas, plus some editorial posts from me, on my blog: http://mrqsciencenews.blogspot.com/

Kindergarten Ideas: This is a little redundant from last week, but for an easy investigation, try this: which rolls further down a ramp: a big ball or a small ball?  If you looked at something like that already, play with other variables, like a heavy ball or a light ball.  If you did it already as a class, let the students generate which question to investigate next, or pick up on a misconception you discovered during your previous trial.

I’ve put in enough pictures of balls and ramps, so here’s something different.

First Grade Ideas: Here’s an indicator: “Identify how natural earth materials (e.g., food, water, air, light, and space), help to sustain plant and animal life. “ Here’s your investigation: What do seeds need to germinate?  Your control is seeds in a Ziploc with a damp paper towel, in the dark.  Do two bags for each group: one control, and one where they change a variable.  Use soda instead of water.  Keep some in the light instead of the dark. Put some in the fridge instead of room temperature. You might be surprised at what your seeds can do.

Try it with Diet Mountain Dew…

Second Grade Ideas: Here’s an indicator: “Investigate and provide evidence that matter is not destroyed or created through changes.”  There are many ways to start to get at this one.  Make things out of legos, weigh the thing, then break it apart and weigh the individual pieces.  That  one’s easy, this is harder: make something out of playdoh, and then shred it down to the smallest pieces possible. Weigh the before and after.  Cut up a piece of paper, same thing.  Let me know if you need little digital scales – I have a bunch.

Weighs the same – assembled or disassembled.

Third Grade Ideas: This indicator would work great for an investigation: “Identify and discuss as a class some misconceptions about heat sources (e.g., clothes do not produce heat, ice cubes do not give off cold). “ How can they prove that a jacket does not produce heat?  Here’s something a little harder: How can they show how much heat a machine produces?  Hint: you’ve got to trap that heat, so think about putting a laptop in a cardboard box, with a blanket over it.  Now you’ve trapped the heat.  See me for digital thermometers – they work way better for this kind of thing.

All machines produce heat.  Some more than others…

Fourth Grade Ideas: Here’s an indicator: “Describe how the water cycle relates to the water supply in your community. “ Here’s a possible investigation: How does the shape of a container effect the rate of evaporation? This is all about surface area.  More surface area generally means more evaporation.  Compare a deep container with a shallow container, with the same amount of water.  Let them struggle with how to collect data – how to quantify it.  Hint: You can probably measure how much the water level dropped, or weigh the containers.  But let them figure it out!

¡Ciencias!

Fifth Grade Ideas: You’re on heredity, and it’s harder to do an investigation there.  Generation cycles just take way too long with any living thing.  So let’s look at something else!  Back to chemical and physical changes, because we can never get enough of those.  This indicator is perfect: “Hypothesize how changing one of the materials in a chemical reaction will change the results.” This is a natural fit.  Do baking soda and vinegar inside a graduated cylinder.  That way you can measure how high up it bubbles.  Then systematically change the amount of reactants and see what you get.  For example, always do 50 ml of vinegar, and do 1 tsp baking soda, then 2 tsp, then 3, and so on.  It is okay if the setup does not yield perfect data the first time – mess with it!  That is science.

No hats in school, Miss. But good job sciencing.

Sixth Grade Ideas: I just saw this one at Hawthorne, and the kids were having a blast: 

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/topnav/materials/listbytype/EDC_TPS.html#.VwaJJ_kgsgs

Plus it’s from NASA, so automatic cool points.  Let me know if you need help with any aspect of the setup, because it takes some doing.

If that’s intimidating, I’ll steer you back to the stomp rockets I mentioned in my last email.  If you’re interested in doing other rockets later (water bottle, or otherwise) it’s a cheap, fast, and safe way to run a lot of prototypes.  And that’s truly where the learning occurs – many prototypes. Two or three is not many.  Just let me know if you want to use the stomp rocket platforms, I made three for your use.

I've already made the launchers, and I angle mine 45 degrees sideways.  Then the kids make the rockets.

Thanks everyone, and remember, investigations take time!  Give them the time they deserve.

We're Mostly Wrong

Recently, I heard an interesting thing from an entrepreneur.  He was telling me about how his company generates new ideas.  They watch the market, and get an idea about which products might be successful.

And that those ideas are mostly wrong.

Sounds like a recipe for failure.  But they're not.  Very much the opposite, actually. The trick is, they have a lot of ideas.  And they test them all.  From the testing comes data, and from the data comes a decision about which products aren't wrong.  A small fraction of them are right. (Roughly 10%, he told me.)

When they find one that's right, they go all in.

This is what we mean when we say we're teaching kids to think scientifically.  Because in a complex world, our brains actually aren't that good at determining what's true.  We're good at figuring out if that shadow in the woods is a tiger, or recognizing a face, even if that person has a new haircut. But it doesn't take much abstraction before we lose our edge.  Smoking is bad for you?  Washing hands decreases the spread of disease?   More standardized testing will save education? These are things about which our "conventional wisdom" were wrong. But luckily, science was able to give us truth.

To generate truth, we need to look at data. And to generate the right data, we need to be good at designing investigations.

Kids will need this kind of thinking for the rest of their lives.  They'll need to figure out how to eat.  How to study.  What kind of company to start. These are answers that cannot be googled.  And "conventional wisdom" in these areas is constantly proven wrong.  Have we taught them how to design an investigation to generate the data they'll need to answer those questions?

Without those investigations, they'll never have the benefit of this incredible thing science offers us: that's it's okay to be mostly wrong.

Science Ideas for 4/1/2016

There are many things I can’t believe, and one of them is that it’s April already.  We’re entering the crunch time of year – testing is either knocking on the door, or upon us already.  So upper grades, we have you finishing your last units in the next two weeks.  Lower grades, we’ve got you paced out a little further.  I hope you find the ideas below useful.

Kindergarten Ideas: We’re on to the first standard in your core, about the nature of science, and conducting investigations.  .  I’ll quote Objective 1 here: “Generating Evidence: Using the processes of scientific investigation (i.e. framing questions, designing investigations, conducting investigations, collecting data, drawing conclusions)”

This is a great one for rolling things down ramps.  We use the ramp thing a lot, but it’s just really easy to put together investigations, and kids like rolling things. For starters, compare two different types of balls, and see which one goes further when rolled down the ramp, across the carpet.  Have the kids predict, then talk about data, and what data you can collect to prove which one went further.  From there, you can do a lot of things to elaborate – change the ramp height, find balls of similar size but different weight, compare different surfaces (roll down the hall, or across tile.)  The idea is we’re trying to get them to think scientifically about learning something about the world.

Ramps are like soy.  Useful for so many things!

First Grade Ideas: Next week is a great week to go outside in the morning and find the moon.  Even if you’ve done that already this year, actually, especially if you’ve done that already this year, go check it out.  Observe those patterns.  Is it in a different place in the sky, compared to earlier this year? Look back to our soda straw moon spotting rig from earlier this year.  Check out my blog post about that from back in December: http://mrqsciencenews.blogspot.com/2015/12/science-ideas-for-12715.html

Second Grade Ideas: “Observe falling objects and identify things that prevent them from reaching the ground. “ Design parachutes.  Find a nice high place to drop stuff – second story railings work great.  A small stuffed animal works well as a payload, and adds a little drama to the action. Use a stopwatch to time how long it takes to hit the ground, and refine the designs as they go! Doesn’t get much better than that!

 

Third Grade Ideas: Here’s something a little different for your forces and motion.  It applies to this indicator: “Show how these concepts apply to various activities (e.g., batting a ball, kicking a ball, hitting a golf ball with a golf club) in terms of force, motion, speed, direction, and distance (e.g. slow, fast, hit hard, hit soft). “ Though it’s really more of an engineering challenge.  They are called Stomp Rockets, and they’re really simple.  There is a 2 liter bottle, which is attached to a PVC pipe.  The pipe angles up, and you slide a paper “rocket” over the other end.  Stomp on the soda bottle to push the air out of the tube, thus launching the rocket, like blowing into a soda straw with the wrapper still on it.  See the picture below, it makes way more sense. So you start with the most basic design, which is just a tube, and the kids engineer it from there.  Add tail fins, weight, use different types of paper – the sky’s the limit!  I have three stomp rocket launchers built, though it’s best if you bring your own soda bottles.  The bottles do wear out after enough stomps.  The kids can measure either how far the rocket flew to gauge its success.  So this kinda teaches forces, but it’s really an awesome way to teach data collection, independent variables, and testing one variable at a time. 

A word about that – methodically changing one variable at a time is NOT a natural process for most kids.  It must be taught.  Don’t be afraid to go through this activity 2 or 3 times, really taking the time to talk about variables.  It’s complex! Take the time it deserves. P.S. – any grade level can do this, not just 3^rd.  Just let me know, and we’ll make it happen!  It’s a blast.

Fourth Grade Ideas: Here’s an indicator from all the water cycle stuff: “Describe how the water cycle relates to the water supply in your community. “ I just received a few cool maps from the Public Utility Department at the city here – one of them shows our watershed, and I’ve attached it to this email.  A few things to notice about this map: which direction is the water flowing?  Look at the elevation numbers – what do those tell us about where water is going?  Does the Jordan River flow North, or South?  How do you know?  What do you think the dotted lines mean when the rivers hit the urban environments? Like any map, or good data set, there are so many questions you can ask, and so many things you can learn with your kids by examining it.  If you like this one, I have access to more.  Just let me know.

This is a random picture a watershed.  What you want is the attached file of the actual map I talked about above.

Fifth Grade Ideas: Still working with heredity.  Here’s a lesson from UEN that covers many indicators within the heredity standard: http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview?LPid=2713  It’s all about mealworms and earthworms, which are delightful little creatures!  Let me know if you need any assistance getting your hands on some.  Sometimes the hardest part can be just getting out to the store to get a simple thing.  It’s as easy as “Hey Kevin, can you get me some worms for next week?”  I’m better than Amazon Prime. Just let me know.

Sixth Grade Ideas:  Here’s a little one for you: in trying to distinguish radiation from conduction and convection, show the kids that we can bounce radiation off a mirror.  Check out a heater like this:  http://www.murdochs.com/shop/comfort-zone-oscillating-parabolic-dish-radiant-heater/ The heating element is in the center, and the radiation bounces off the parabolic mirror dish in the back, thus spreading it out to the area we’re trying to heat.  If I had one to loan, that would be 1,000 times better, but we can still learn something from thinking about it.  That will help them understand that conduction and convection are when the molecules bump into each other, but radiation is a totally different mechanism.

Think you could get a tan from this thing?