Friday, October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween!  Luckily we are not in class with the kids right now because we know they'd be bouncing off the walls, and we would get nothing accomplished.  Unfortunately, we are at an Institute Day which seems long even though we get out two hours early.  During our breaks we will take the opportunity to type this blog.

Our Force and Motion unit in science continued this week.  We really feel that with all the hands-on activities our students are really internalizing the concept of forces and the vocabulary that is needed for understanding it.  After exploring forces with commercial tops, our students designed their own tops using everyday items.  This was a good activity to have the students really think about what makes a top work.  Surprisingly, after all the exploring they did with tops most groups were not successful in creating a top that could spin for 10 seconds.  The positive thing that came out of this lesson was the fact that the kids had to figure out why their top didn't work.  This led to great conversations, and most of them were spot on.

Many of our kids stated that one reason their top did not spin was because their top was too heavy.  So, the second part of our top designs addressed how weight affected how long a top spins.  In fact, that was our question to them--"How does weight affect how long a top spins?"  Of course many of them hypothesized that their top would not spin at all or it would spin slowly and for a short time.  It was fun for them to discover the exact opposite of their hypotheses happened.

As we reflected on the results of this activity, we were able to introduce the students to the term momentum. We then wanted to see how well students could reflect on their learning throughout these top activities. They did a great job incorporating their understandings of the science concepts to what actually happened with the tops, and they had a lot of fun doing it!



Next week we will be moving on to the concept of gravity, and we will have a Flying Cup Experiment to share with you. We can't wait because it has been a big hit in the past, and it has been awhile since we have taught it!

Have a great weekend!
Kim and Anne