Energy and the Water Cycle Project

This week I assigned a project to my students on potential and kinetic energy.  The project came from a set of questions they were answering after they read a short 2 pages on mechanical energy.  I decided to elaborate on the questions and turn it in to a project.  I am hoping that the students do a good job with the project! I tried to provide the students a few ways of presenting their project.  They can do it as a story, or complete it in a more straight forward paragraph.  Each will be accompanied by a picture they create.  They may create their project by hand or by using a computer.  Here is a brief description of the project. 

Students will be using the concepts of potential and kinetic energy to describe the path a water droplet travels through the water cycle.  Students will need to describe the path of the drop of water from the time it falls from the sky as a raindrop until it reaches the ocean.  In their description, students need to include a swift mountain stream, a still lake, a slow-moving river, and a waterfall.  Students will need to incorporate how the potential energy and kinetic energy of the drop changes along the path.  Make sure to include ALL parts.  Each student has 2 options as to how they would like to present their water droplet's journey. 

Option 1: Using a plain piece of white paper, illustrate the entire journey of the water droplet.  On a separate piece of paper, neatly write or type your water droplet's story; be sure to include all the requirements of the journey and what is happening to the potential and kinetic energy at each point along the journey. 

Option 2: Using a plain piece of white paper, illustrate the journey of the water droplet as a comic strip story.  Include each separate "destination" as its own box on the comic.  In each box, creatively include a description of the journey and what is happening to the potential and kinetic energy. If you would like to do this digitally, let me know and I will give you access to BitStrips.

   

Kids and Technology

I was so proud of some of my kids today!!!  We are doing this project for a science grant.  The kids have to do a ton of independent work, thinking, and are using technology like crazy.  The kids are working in small groups and each student has a specific job (team lead, data analyst, and communications officer).  So far they have had to research a company (3M) and create a slide show using haiku deck.  Haiku deck is quick easy way for kids to make a presentation.  (It is sort of like a Prezi...)

Today, the kids started to complete their experiment for the company.  The kids used their personal phones and ipods etc. to take pictures of the experiment during the day.  They are using Google drive to share their pictures and data with their group and the class.

My proud moment today...

As students finished the lab today a few of them brought me their devices to show me something.  Some of the groups had taken all their lab photos and used flipagram to make quick videos.  Some of the students even added music.  I never suggested to do anything like this, they just knew the technology existed and decided it would be fun to try.  What a cool moment for me as a teacher.  I was so happy to see them enjoying themselves and being creative with technology.  Some of the videos were really neat.  I just can't express how happy I was!

We are in test mood all over the building and the stress can be overwhelming, but moments like today make everything worth it.  It seems like a small thing to be proud of but it was awesome!

Rolling Through the Rock Cycle

Last week, we wrapped up our unit on rocks and minerals.  I played the rock cycle game with my students and they LOVED it.  The game got them up and moving around and they got a kick out their individual paths.  Some of the kids got stuck in one spot for multiple turns.  They did awesome and realized just how long it could take for parts of the rock cycle to happen.  I was very pleased with how well they did with the activity and unstructured nature of it all.

After the game, students used a comic strip website (pixton.com) to make comics depicting their individual journey through the rock cycle.  Students could be as creative or straight forward with their journey as they wanted.  The kids really enjoyed the comic strips as well.  Most of them had never used the program before and it took some getting use to, but they are kids and catch on pretty quick when it comes to technology.  ;-)

I have uploaded the PDF of my Rock Cycle Game to TeachersPayTeachers .  Check it out HERE.

Mystery Samples

Today, my students completed one of my favorite labs of the year.  The students take film canisters (you know, from back when we had rolls of actual film for the camera) that have mystery items sealed inside.  They shake each canister and make an observation about the sound it makes.  Then, they test to see if it is magnetic.  Finally, they make an inference about what is in the canister.  This lab is so fun to watch, and the kids guesses are awesome!  Sometimes they are right on and other times they are very off, but creative. :-) Inside the canisters are items like paperclips, rubber bands, marble, button, eraser, paper, and toothpicks.  I have 15 canisters and they rotate in groups about every two minutes.  They have to work quickly, but that is part of the fun.  If you don't know what is in the canister more time isn't going to help.

The lab comes from the book Picture Perfect Science.  We do the whole observation and inference section in the book.  I love that I get to read "kids" books to my 6th graders.  They always get pretty excited about the fact that they get story time again.  They all gather around on the carpet at my feet while I read.  Some are too "cool" to act excited, but they love it too.

Skittles Lab

We did a Skittles Lab this last week in science. Our science blocks are pretty short, so it took us about 3 days. I absolutely love this lab!!! It incorporates so many different skills from both math and science. 

Kids start by making a hypothesis about how many total Skittles and how many of each color they think there are in a fun size bag. Then, they open their bag and fill in a data table with their information.  Next, students go around to each other and collect others Skittles data. Once they have all their data, students find the average of the total Skittles in a bag as well as the average for each color. Next, students make two bar graphs, one of their personal data and one of the class averages. Students have to identify the independent and dependent variables and write a strong a conclusion. Finally, students find the median, mode and range of the data for each color of Skittle.

Students collecting data

calculating averages

student data table

counting Skittles

happy hump day...

The Scientific Method

This last week, my students were learning about the scientific method. We have taken some notes in their interactive notebooks and have finished 2 labs so far.

The first set of notes was not all that exciting. It was just some basic definitions and such. For notes on the actual scientific method process we made a "wheel". I was pretty happy with the way it turned out, and the kids got a kick out of the clip art.

These are some pictures of the templates I made and the kid's books as they worked.

The first lab that we did this week was outside. I had the kids take string and mark off a 10 foot x 10 foot square for their group. In their group they had to make a hypothesis about how many four-leaf clovers they would be able to find in their square in 20 minutes. This was really hard, but some groups did find a few.

This was their lab worksheet... (You can purchase this lab at my TpT store)

We also did a magic grow lab on Thursday. For this lab each group picked a magic grow capsule. (you know those sponges that grow in water from a capsule). They had to make a hypothesis about their capsule, then they soaked the capsule, measured the sponge after it grew, and wrote a conclusion.

This coming week, we still have a lab on the computer and then we get to do my favorite part of the unit... Observations and Inferences!!! I absolutely love this part. I love the books we read and the labs we do. I will write a post more on that later. :-)

Interactive Notebooks

I am finally getting around to this post... It has only taken me a few weeks, but I guess that is what happens when school is in. I am using interactive notebooks this year for math and science. I am loving them so far.

For the front inside of the science notebook I had the kids make a picture table of contents. They had to divide the page into 6 sections (one for each unit) and draw and color at least 2 pictures that represent that topic.
This was mine before it was finished. (I still need a few pictures of my kids books)

For the inside of the math notebook I had the kids do a Math About Me page. I found this idea on Pinterest. (The "link" just goes to a picture so I have no idea where it really came from.) For this page they had to come up with six ways to tell something about them using numbers. They had to add pictures and color to this pages as well.

More pages to come...