Olga's Elementary Science Methods 1/2 Blog

     Elementary Science II Week 5: September 23rd- 27th In the lab this week we continued to discuss the question of how we can support play that is exciting but not dangerous. To do this, we asked how to design a playground surface. We started by discussing the different types of materials that playgrounds are built on, such as wood chips and plastic. In our groups, we designed an egg-drop model where we would recreate a “playground surface” and drop an egg from a meter to test the surface. My group chose sand on the bottom, hay in the middle, and one layer of plastic way. On our first test, we measured 1 meter and dropped the egg. It bounced out and cracked, like in image one. In the second test, we missed placing the egg to the bowl, it cracked on the floor.  The third time we took hay off and it worked! We also talked about Newton's 3rd law, even if our brains don’t believe its forces come in equal pairs, the car video is a big example. This connects to the ...

         Elementary Science II Week 4: September 16th- 20th In the lab this week we got to finish learning about friction and discuss some of the things we did in last week's lab. A key point was that the big assumption is made when talking about what affects a rider's speed when going down a slide. Many people say weight matters, the more weight the slower you go. However, a group in our class tested this idea and proved that weight does not affect the speed on a slide.  Our question this week was what affects how long it takes a swing to go back and forth? My group chose to test the idea that a rider's position matters when swinging if the rider is sitting up straight or leaning back. We estimated that if the rider moves their weight to the back when leaning, he can get more momentum and swing faster. So to test this idea my group placed 2 washers in the middle of the “swing” and did two tests. We did the same test but moved the two washers to the bac...

                                                                                   Elementary Science II Week 3: September 9th- 13th In lab this week we continued to work on our big question, how can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous. To answer we had to look closely at one area of the playground. So our job was to test with different factors. Our question of the day was whether a slide's steepness affects how fast a rider goes down the slide? We started by testing different steepness and recorded how long it took them to get to the bottom. After 5 tests and lots of great feedback, we were about to chat our information. The conclusion is that yes the steepness of the slide can make a rider go down faster but there is a limit...

 Elementary Science II Week 1: August 26th - 30th In the lab this week we asked ourselves "Why should elementary students learn about science?" My group discussed turning students' curiosity into critical thinking. Students love to ask questions and want to learn how things work or why things are the way they are. We as teachers need to support this through science because science helps develop many skills. We also asked ourselves "How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?" We looked at racing as an example, "how can we ensure that a race is exciting?" Our job was to work with our table group to figure out how to get two different racers to finish simultaneously even though they ran at different speeds. After much testing, my group figured out that if we let one racer start and get to a certain point when jumping on one foot and then let the second race (who is walking) start then they both will end the race at the same time.  In the ...