Teachers Being Students: Doing Science-From Observations to Results

At the beginning of the school year I like to introduce my 8th graders to think like a scientist. I give students an Ob-Scertainer (http://www.flinnsci.com/store/Scripts... ). It's a great way to discuss what observations, predictions, hypotheses and results are. It also leads to a good discussion of the significance of results. I want to thank the teachers that volunteered to be my "students" for this video.

Teachers Being Students: How Many Molecules Are in a Drop of Water?

Middle school students are often afraid of being perceived as stupid when trying to solve problems in class. When they see adults, in this case their teachers, go through the same struggles, they are more willing in the future to test and share their ideas. I want to thank the very courageous non-science teachers at my school for volunteering to be a part of this video. This activity covers NGSS practices: (2) Developing and using models. (5) Using mathematics and computational thinking. It also covers the NGSS crosscutting concepts: (3) Scale, proportion, and quantity.

Sources used: The Naked Scientists and The Mega Penny Project

Melting Rates

This is a good discrepit event to start a conversation on heat energy. Ice cubes are placed on blocks made of different materials (although students aren't aware of that). One ice cube melts at a much faster rate than the other. The block that melted the ice cube faster feels colder than the other. Students are quick to predict/assume that the warmer block would have melted the ice cube faster. This leads to a critical thinking discussion of how heat energy flows and the ability of materials to conduct heat better or worse than others. 

Scientific Method Box

It’s far from the beginning of the school year but that doesn’t mean you can’t teach students how science works. The way I ease my students to this somewhat complex concept is to expose them to the scientific method concept box. Students first make observations with their eyes about the box. After they share what they actually see (colors, words, numbers, and most importantly one side is covered up), they should come up with a question that they are wondering about. The question is “what does the covered side look like?” Students then generate hypotheses about the numbers, colors and words that make up that covered side. They then make more observations and see if there are any patterns in the data. They adjust their hypotheses as they continue to make observations. They finally get to uncover the side in question and compare the results to their hypotheses. For some students the results are expected and match their hypotheses. For others the results do not match their hypotheses. It’s a really good lead to a discussion that what is important in science is data that can lead to a conclusion regardless if the hypothesis is supported or not. In fact it is the unexpected results that lead to new scientific questions and discoveries that weren’t thought possible before. If you want the template for the boxes, email me at darren@sciencefix.com and I will send it to you.

Teachers Being Students: "What is Mass?"

Four brave non science teachers at my school were asked the question, "What is mass?"  The teachers struggled to answer the question. Students learn science concepts best by confronting what they know about a concept, usually a misconception, and then trying to fit new and often conflicting information with that knowledge. Students often view this as confusing, but studies have shown that they learn a science concept better (see Veritasium's talk on effective education movies). The purpose of this video is to show my students that teachers/adults go through the exact same process.