Amazing! Please read!!! Kepler's First Earth Size Planets!

Astro Did You Know?: Kepler's First Earth Size Planets!

Week 2 Science 6661 with Dr. Bianca Garner

For this week, the focus of my guided inquiry was the question, "Which pendulum will come to rest more quickly-a lighter pendulum or a heavier pendulum?" To gain insight, I reflected back to doing this experiment with my students a month ago. When I first introduced the concept of a pendulum, the students had a difficult time visualizing what it was. The challenges I face with inquiry-based learning is my students are not used to this type of teaching. They are used to being spoon fed the answers and are almost afraid to ask questions and be curious. However, they have grown a lot since the beginning of the year and are well on their way to being inquisitive scientists.

    For the engage part of the activity, since they were having a difficult time visualizing what a pendulum was, I took them out on the playground to re-enact a version of the experiment in the book regarding Newton's Second Law of Motion (Integrated Science, p 41). I chose the smallest student in my class and we both sat on a swing. We then swung back and forth several times until we picked up some momentum. When I had us both stop pumping our legs on the swings, I instructed the student to come to a halt naturally, without touching her feet to the ground. My students found that the lighter of us (my student) came to rest more quickly. However, they could not quite yet explain why.

    For the next step, we wrote down vocabulary words in their science notebooks that had to do with pendulums. Words like: momentum, pendulum, variables are words that had to do with the unit and that I thought would help with understanding the concept of pendulums. Next, we had a conversation as a class to try to tie the vocabulary words to what they witnessed with the swings. Again, my students pointed out great concepts and we had a great discussion. However, they failed to make the specific connection between the weight of a pendulum and momentum.

    Students then worked in pairs and received materials (string, paper clips and pennies) to make their own pendulums. They recorded their information on charts as they conducted several fifteen second trials of swinging their pendulums. As they did this, they gradually increased the weight by adding a penny to their paper clip on the string with each trial. In the end, we graphed the results as a class on the smart board and discussed their findings. After the experiment, the students were able to explain in their written reponses and also in class discussion that the lighter the pendulum was, the more quickly it came to rest.

    Overall, this type of experiment and inquiry-based learning greatly benefits my students. Not only does it make learning more interesting, but it encourages students to become more inquisitive and independent. Rather than just teaching students how to pass a test, this type of learning helps prepare the students to pay attention to the world around them and to become critical thinkers that can make every day, real-world connections.     

•     When I reflect back on this lesson, I would not change a thing. I actually love it that my students were having a difficult time at first understanding the concept of the pendulum and the real-world application. It forced me to get more creative. Based on my past experiences
  with scientific inquiry, the modifications I could make to this experiment to get a different or modified result would be to change different variables in the experiment. For example, if I wanted to show the students that a variable in this experiment that I could change to get a different outcome would be, I could change the starting point of when I began to swing the pendulum. I could have the student and I not go back all of the way on our swings and see how many times we swung back and forth before coming to a halt. As oppose to starting as far back as possible on the swing and then going. I would also have the students do this (and I did) where the students could do a couple of trials where they release their penny from the middle rather than all of the way at the top of the paper clip. The students saw in the end that it picked up less momentum when they did this.
  

References

Enger, E., Ross, F., Tillery, B. (2008). Integrated Science, Fourth Edition. United States of America: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The Science Center. (2003). A Case For Inquiry Based Learning. (2003) The Science Center. Retrieved from http://www.thesciencecenter.org/InquiryBasedLearn

 

Astronomy.FM now on Google+

Astronomy.FM now on Google+

Found this tonight! Should be fun to listen to!

Solar Flares and Full Moon Today!

I am interested to see if the solar flares today will effect us. Read the NASA article to check out more about it!

Check out the night time sky this month, everyone! There are some amazing things occuring! Last night, Mars showed up in the night time sky (an orangish-reddish "star") in the Eastern sky. It hasn't been this close to Earth since 2003! Also, all through the month, there are different things occuring. Check out the NASA website (on the bottom of this page) for daily images and for a planetary calendar of what is going on. It's pretty sweet!
Some links below are those that you can check the images out on and read up on what will be in the nighttime sky this month...

http://earthsky.org/tonight

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/whatsup2012March.html

Teachers, I had a sky viewing party with my students on the evening of March 19th. It was one of the most beneficial events I have ever organized. Over 150 people attended and we had a line up of telescopes that evening. I set up different stations for the students, but the most popular station was the telescope station. Ironically enough, the most powerful telescope was a children's telescope I bought for my son. We saw the surface of Venus and it was amazing! That evening I thought, "THIS is why I went into teaching". I encourage anyone to try the same event if they love astronomy or love science. The families and students loved it, too. 

Solar System

Right now in my class, my students are learning about the planets and the solar system. We just finished moon phases, which was a blast. At the end of the unit, we re-created the moon phases using oreo cookies. If I can, I will post a picture of this. It is always helpful when you can include food in a lesson because it ties in the senses to the lessons and proves to be something that they will never forget!