A Day in the Garage

2/20/13

Opening as a class today we discussed our experiences during our first session of lesson feedback with our team.  Kim reminded us that we should keep a focus on how we are approaching inquiry throughout our lessons and how the students responded. We should focus on how to get the students involved in the lessons and try to engage them in an inquiry-based discussion about the science experiments and lessons. 

Project Learning Tree Activity: Throughout this in class activity our team chose a lesson from the PLT manual and our task was to provide modifications that would mold this lesson into an inquiry-based lesson.  My team chose a lesson on Community Planning, and we decided that it would be effective to instead do a lesson that revolved around creating a school community.  Talking about how a school is like a community and have them focus on what aspects of their school are also vital elements in a community. This was a useful assignment because it gave our team the opportunity to discuss various aspects we could adapt and modify in order to make this lesson a useful inquiry-based lesson.

Our Experiment of the Day!

Challenge: Can you light this bulb?

Tools for experiment:

Battery

foil

extra wire

Xmas lightbulb with wire

Questions during experiement:

Would it light if the wires were long enough to touch both sides of the battery?

Is our battery out of power?

Is the light bulb broken?

How could we make the bulb light brighter? 

What do we know about electricity?

-Conduction

- positive/negative charges

- grounded

-chock

-circuit (opened/closed)

Second Challenge: 

Create a circuit board with 5 questions and 5 answers.  If you were to touch one question and the correct answer the bulb would light.

Tools: Aluminum foil (conductor), tape (to make sure the foil doesn't touch/ it will not short circuit), batteries, bulb with wire.

Tips for Teaching:

Koch would recommend that teachers address the distinction of what uses electricity and what is electricity   She gave an example of a teacher asking students if they were going to buy a pound of electricity at the grocery store what would they buy? Some students replied that they would buy a pound of lightbulbs while other students said they would buy a pound of batteries.  The teacher could then pose the question: "Is it the same to say that light bulbs are electricity as is is to say that light bulbs work on electricity?" Koch points out that "students often think of the materials that produce or carry electricity as being the electricity" (Koch, 226).

Koch Chapter:

Chapter 10 also addressed the discussion of Atoms.  A difficult concept for students because they are things that you cannot see with the naked eye.  Koch offers an effective tools to explain this lesson through the use of a Mystery Box activity.  A teacher should explain that the way they use their senses to investigate and make educated guesses about what is inside the box, are similar to the way scientists need to think about and explore atoms. (Use all sense and prior knowledge and understanding)  

Always remember to incorporate The 5 E's :

Engage

Explore

Explain

Elaborate

Evaluate

Final Thoughts: I am looking forward to seeing how my team's lessons will turn out these next two weeks now that we have received feedback on each of our lesson plans. My partner and I have set goals for how we will approach our next lesson and try our best to incorporate technology and many opportunities for inquiry-based discussion with the students.