Blog Post Week 11

What did you learn this week?

This week we did a fun new type of lab day. It was very much so hands on learning which I found both fun, interactive and engaging. I took away that by switching up style of instruction you can keep things entertaining and fun! We did 6 main experiments in lab today so I will write a little about all of them and my takeaways. I will talk about a few and my takeaways.

1. Plunger Push: This activity was where you stuck the plunger to different surfaces and see if it is easier or harder to pull off of the differing ones. On the table top table it was by far the hardest to get off, we think because the air was trapped in plunger and pressure was higher so harder to pull off. One of the easiest places to pull off was off a chair with holes in it. For the chair, it really did not stick at all. We thought this because air goes right through holes so no pressure is able to build up!

2. Ice Test: the activity for this experiment was to grab two ice cubs and put one on mini wood board, and the other in a silver pot pan. We before doing this had to make an inference on if the ice cube would melt quicker on the wood or in the silver pot pan. In the end did it melt ffaster in the silver pot, which did surprise me a little bit because originally I guessed it would melt quicker on the wood because it was more in the open and had more things around it. It was interesting for sure in making predictions and re evaluating on really why it melted faster in silver pot pan and we predicted due to conduction.

3. Baking Soda and Vinegar: For this experiment we added baking soda and vinegar together in baggie. Immediately did it mainly fizzed at first then pressure built up while the bag also grew colder due to chemical reaction. I am still left wondering why mixture foamed and why bag expanded. My guess though was due to the air being trapped so automatically the pressure is what filled in bag.

4. Can Activity: took can out of cooler then observed what happened considering right away it would have been cold and wet. We observed towel got wet, showed a lot of condensation. I assumed both of these occurrences took place because can quickly had to adapt to the change in the new temperature.

5. M&M's in water: For this we put water on paper plate, then put m&m's spread out in water and watched for changes- picture below. We noticed the color changing immediately and started spreading out into the water in which all the color ended up mixing together and then the m&m was quickly just white color instead of color surrounding m&m now.

 

How can you apply what you've learned to your teaching in the future?

I can take our findings from lab into my future teachings, by reminding me to keep things fun and original. Lectures and power points work sometimes to educate your students which would represent "explain" section of 5E Instructional Model, but other times you should branch out to other sections of the model like explore to give students chance to be hands on learning science instead. After this lab, I now can say it keeps things fun and original and reminds you it can be fun. Even experiments like this branch and lead for strong learning and strong path, but it is just about giving clear instructions and bridging areas for success!

 

 

 

What are new or remaining questions? 

- why does pressure trapped in plunger matter within air? 

- what is pressure in science? 

- why does baking soda and vinegar foam when added together? 

- why do cold drinks condensate but not hot drinks?

Lecture: 

For lecture, we briefly went over exploring NGSS again and understanding what elementary students should know about matter. I learned it is about looking into how students should be able to use known knowledge and what key ideas students should know and be able to engage with related to matter. Grade bands go a long way to I learned in deepening overall knowledge to take out key ideas and strategies for learning.

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