I want my science students to have fun in class but I also want my students to learn the process of science. I want to challenge their thinking and reasoning ability. In doing so, I do not want class to be too hard or too difficult for the students. I want my students to learn and enjoy science.
I have always loved my science classes in grade school, middle school and especially in high school. Since I graduated from high school in 1983, we had no Internet or even computers to help us in science. We did a lot of hands on applications and a lot of thinking and reasoning. I had a blast in my classes so I have a desire to make my classes fun and exciting. And hopefully challenging at the same time.
My main focus of this blog is to find fun activities that enhances science and challenges the student's thinking. Of course I want these classes to be fun. I did some looking around on the Internet and found a cool website. This web site is titled Steve Spangler Science, Making Science Fun. There is a great experiment on this page titled Light Sticks. Most kids I know love light sticks and since it is getting closer to Halloween, it seems like a great experiment.
There are a lot of experiments on this web page. The experiment's are broken down by grade levels. The experiments are explained well and there is added information about the experiments that you could use for extensions.
I think the students would find this experiment to be a lot of fun.
Light sticks are a cool phenomenon. I looked at Steve Spangler's site and want to caution you a bit. 1) His investigations are very step by step. Think about how that misrepresents science. 2) The vocabulary he introduces at the end of the light stick experiment is way too advanced for elementary students (developmentally inappropriate).
ReplyDeleteThat said, his activities would be a great starting point. Instead of following his steps consider what you might show students to get them asking their own questions about the light sticks. For example, you might show the students a light stick "turning on" and ask them to make observations. When a student notices that the stick doesn't turn on "right away" ask them what they think might make the stick light up faster. Brainstorm the ideas as a class. Likely one of the students will suggest heat, then you can ask them how they could make the stick warmer or colder. Now the students have made the decisions (with your guidance) and they are thinking more deeply and even more interested!
One other thing in your post deserves mentioning. You like science. This is great - many of your classmates didn't like science so have to figure out how to get students excited about something they were not excited about - you don't have that problem, but you do have another problem. Since you like science it will be very easy for you to do stuff that is "cool" or "interesting" but is not developmentally appropriate or really fundamental to science. Just something to begin thinking about.
Nancy-
ReplyDeleteI will echo some of what Jerrid said about Spangler Science (and other activity resource sites). Often, they present a very cookbookish approach. You can get great ideas, but need to do some work to give your students authentic experiences. These sites also often give activities without any context, so you need to make sure that you think through how & why you are doing the activity in order to match your learning goals.
As you find activities and resources for future posts, it would be great if you could include links so that we can visit them too!
Hey Nancy,
ReplyDeleteI totally relate to wanting to make a science classroom fun and relavant at the same time! Despite the two other comments, I would have thought that lesson sounded great too! It seems so hard to know at this point! Hopefully you will find more out there! It will be interesting to see what cool sources you are able to find in the next few weeks!