Lab: What is Energy??

I. LOVE. TEACHING.  Love it... Love it... love it.  I can't wait for tomorrow where my students get to become a newscast in the Amazon Rainforest; however, today I had such a great time teaching them about energy.  The best is peaking their interest.   As I have said before, I use the 5 E model when teaching science.  Today was our Engage and Explore lesson on forms of energy.

So how do you engage a bunch of kids on energy?  

Get yourself a beaker of colored water, double pan balance, rock and a flashlight.

Place rock on balance which moves down (proved it has mass)
Place rock in beaker which the water will rise (water displacement and proves rock has volume)
Ask what that means about the rock? (It is matter.)
Ask: what about light? and turn off the lights.
Shine light on balance, then in the beaker.... both don't move (proves light is not matter)... some kids are actually surprised by this.  Its these moments where I know bulbs will be lighting up as to understanding the simple things we take for granted.
Ask:  If light is not matter, then what is it?  JOURNAL TIME (7-10 minutes using good vocabulary)

So after writing, I asked them, did anyone think they knew what light was if it was not matter?  In each class, someone said energy.... (hear all the others say, "oooooh yeah....." ) Does anyone know any other forms of energy?  Now its time to explore 4 different stations of energy. 

First the students put a 4 door foldable in their journal... I know ... I know... this picture shows a completed lab and not the beginning one, but you can see the foldable.  I am trying to focus more on asking the students why they think something happened rather than what happened. 

On the front flaps, they had to draw and label a diagram of the completed station.  Underneath the flap on the lines of their journal, they had to write why they thought whatever happened, happened.  (I hate it when words do this in a sentence, the double repetition- it leads to major confusion... mostly by me because I cant wrap my head around the repetition... next time Ill find another word rather than repeat it)

Station One.... (Thermal Energy...but students have not yet discovered the term)
Hot water, cold water, sugar cubes and 2 cups.

You know its doing magic in the classroom when you watch sugar dissolve.  Bringing understanding to life's everyday simplicity makes you one cool teacher....

Station Two.... (Mechanical Energy)
Rubber ball and ping pong ball (same size), meter stick
Here's our 2nd YouTube Video!!!! I am feeling so techie....

Although she is technically wrong... I am impressed that she is considering gravity as a reason. 

Station Three (Electricity)
Styrofoam pieces, cut pieces of paper, inflated balloon and a piece of wool (it didn't work for us, so we rubbed the balloons on our heads which worked really well)

The set up

One of our most beloved Spec Ed aides... she let the kids rub the balloon on her sweater when the wool cloth wouldn't work.  They love her so much and so do I!

vigorously rubbing the balloon

How high can the balloon be away from the items and still make them move? WHY??

Future artist.... not the best speller... good thing I'm grading on content and not spelling :)

Station Four (Chemical Energy.... but they really are witnessing a chemical change)
Colored water, bleach, pipette, cup, graduated cylinder, waste water bucket, and GOGGLES!

5 drops should do the trick... try 20.... maybe I shouldn't have used red??

Whew!!! I know, I know.... it's a lot... but it happened so fast... 10-11 minutes per station was more than enough time to get their work done.  Thursday we will be reading on different forms of energy and completing a foldable on it... Here's what I did last year... I know... you're probably thinking, "Good grief!!! Does this chick ever stop taking pictures?!?!"  Yeah I know... what can I say... I'm a visual learner :)

 

So I am off to the Rain forest Newscast Conference tomorrow and back to energy learning on Thursday.  I cant believe I have blogged this much this month!!!! Can you?!?!?!  Happy teaching!

Crunch Time.... Clock Partners

Oh. My. Goodness.  Where did my summer go?  I am sitting here on the couch on my last day of summer.  Tomorrow I return for my first day of in-service.  Who starts in-service on a FRIDAY??  Who does THAT???  and more importantly... why did the school district to that to us?!?!  ugh....

I know I sound like I am complaining.... well yes.... I am complaining but not about starting school!  Just in-service on Friday....but I AM really excited to start this school year off!  In fact I am pretty stoked about teaching one subject (SCIENCE) and working on getting all my tweaks out from last year and trying out new labs and all sorts of finds on pinterest :)

Which brings me to my latest find.... clock partners.  Last year I had my students keep the same table partners for 9 weeks, and usually if they did partner work, it was with the person they sat across from.  It became boring fast, but I didn't want to let them just go willy-nilly and go around working with anyone they chose.  We all know what happens when we do that!  Nothing.... except talking.... about what happened last night.... not about what we are learning.  Ugh.  6th graders.

So I saw something on pinterest about Clock Partners.  The students pick who their partner is at each time slot and they make sure they are on their partners clock at that same time slot.  This will be perfect during the first few days of school, especially when we are setting up our Science Notebooks.  So today I made my own Clock Partners worksheet.  We will fill it out, color it,cut it out and paste it somewhere in the front or back of our journals.  I usually don't decide where to place things until the day of.  So if you would like to use it, it's all yours!  Click here for the Clock Partners worksheet!  You can also see more of my files to share in the green tabs on the left.

Enjoy your last few days.... hours.... minutes.... of sweet summer time!

MNM: Area of Trapezoids... WHY??

WHY?!?! 

The most intriguing question that I ask and try to have an answer for.  So I was about to teach how to find area of a trapezoid, and I thought I could just teach them the formula and how to use it, but then the question hit me... Why??  Why is the formula like this???

My students had a formula chart we refer to as the "cheat sheet" (they get to use this on their STAAR test) and I knew I would not be a good teacher if I didn't explain why the formula was the way it was. 

My students already had figured out the formula to finding the area of a triangle: bh/2 because a triangle is 1/2 of the area of a rectangle or square. 

They figured that out all on their own... with a little jogging by me.  But I had NO IDEA why the formula to a trapezoid was (Base 1 + Base 2)h/2.  Why was the formula this?? And if I couldn't figure it out, how on earth could I teach it???  AHHHH....

So I sat at the kitchen table with my husband and drew, thought, scribbled, reassessed, guess and checked and learned all over again.  The divide by 2 made me think... somehow a triangle is involved here....Then it hit me.... duh... 2 triangles make up a trapezoid.... but they have different bases.  If I find the area of each one and add them then I can find the area.  And it worked.

So I used my jogging questions to help my students figure out the formula to a trapezoid. We started with a trapezoid cut out that I provided to all my students.  I told them that triangles and trapezoids were related.  Using one line, can you figure out how and draw it?  Gotta admit... it stumped some them... they really wanted to draw a square and a triangle(just like I did the night before), but soon enough the light started turning on and they drew a line cutting the trapezoid into 2 triangles.

I told them they already knew how to find the area of triangles, so what could we do to find the area of the trapezoid?  ( Find the area of each triangle and add them)  And so they did.  You can see the work in each triangle and the adding of the 2 triangle areas in the bottom right hand corner of the journal page.

Once they understood this concept, I told them there was an easier way then finding the area of both triangles and adding.  I asked what did the 2 triangles have in common? (the height) What was different in both triangles? (the bases) Well both the bases are being multiplied by the height. right... couldn't we just add the bases and multiply them by the height since they are going to anyway?  Lets test it and see what happens....

Sure enough... we got the same answer.  So why can we do this?  (both of the bases are being multiplied by the same number)  Then I asked what did they notice about the 2 bases? what kind of lines were they? (parallel)  So how can you always find the bases in a trapezoid?  (look for the parallel lines)

With much practice, they can do the formula in no time, but even more importantly, when I ask them why we add the bases, or divide by 2, they can tell me exactly why.  Warm feeling filling the heart now...

And on a side note.... didn't I learn all this in 10th grade Geometry???? When did 10th grade become 6th grade math!??!?!

Gotta get my warm heart feeling again after that blood pressure spike....

Happy Teaching the answer to WHY???

SNS: Rock Cycle Rap and Lab

If you are a regular visitor to my blog, I am sure you know how much I love to use YouTube in the classroom.  This week I taught about the Rock Cycle (I love Earth Science), and played this song for my kids and printed out the lyrics.

After we listened to it and had fun laughing and singing along (even during the 1st time it played), I gave them a sheet of the lyrics and went through each line.  Mr. Lee (rap teacher) uses great vocabulary- compaction, cementation, elusive, intrusive, extrusive... and we used context clues within the rap to determine the meaning of some of the words we didn't know.

Then came the labs.... get ready....

To engage the students I supplied each table with a set of rocks that I asked them to classify based on any physical property.  They had to journal how they classified the rocks and draw a picture.  My rock set had numbers on each rock which helped soooo much this week.  Then we took a "Rock Tour" around the classroom looking at how each group classified their rocks and the students talked about whether they agreed with the placement or not.  

Then we really got hands on... and created rocks.

Created rocks?!?!?!  WHAT??

Yes... out of crayons... and it was messy.... but my psycho anal organized behavior did detour some of the mess.
First we made a fortune teller with 4 flaps labeled as sediment, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, and igneous rock.

Now it was time to make some rocks. It  started with me buying 5 boxes of crayons (I bought the cheap stuff...this summer I am going to stock up when the back to school sale starts), 20 pencil sharpeners (0.47 each), and going to Lowe's (love them) and having them cut a huge board into 10 eight inch x eight inch squares.  I know its a little expensive, but the learning experience is totally worth it.

Procedure:

1. Each student sharpens 1 of 4 crayons (red, yellow, green, blue) down to nothing and put into a cup.

2. Students then used their fingers to make the shavings into fine crumbs.  This is important!!!
3. Place a small sample under the sediment flap of the foldable and place a piece of tape on top.

 4. Pass out 2 pieces of wax paper. You can cut a 12 inch sheet in half and give it to each table.  I had my
     students draw a 10 cm x 10 cm square on the wax paper with a permanent marker.  They then placed
     all their crayon crumbs on the wax paper square.

Crayon Sediments placed together before pressure is added

 5. Place the 2nd sheet of wax paper on top of the crumbs (wax paper crayon sandwich) and place it
     between 2 of the square boards.

  6.  Now have the kids step on top of the boards trying hard not to get the shavings on the floor.  Keep
      having them press on it for a few minutes.  Do not hammer it unless you want a headache, or press with
      their hands (I did this with my morning group and it did not turn out very well).

  7. The pressure has made the shavings stick together... now you have a sedimentary rock.  Have each
     student take a small sample from their crayon sedimentary rock and tape it in their journal.  They also
     wrote that pressure formed the rock on the top flap.

  8.  Now take the remaining sedimentary crayon rock and put it back in between the wax paper, and the wax paper in between the boards.  Using a C-clamp, apply even greater pressure to the crayon sandwich for a new minutes.

 9.  While the clamp was as tight as it could go, I had my students press their hands together as hard as they could.  I asked them what they felt.... they responded with heat.  I explained that while pressure increases so does heat.  What is going to happen to the crayon sandwich now?  The heat is going to melt some of the crayon making it stick together even better.  BOOYAH!

Metamorphic crayon rock

10.  Using a plastic knife, we cut small samples to go under the metamorphic rock flap in our journal and placed a piece of tape on it.  Then the journaling of how it was formed.

11.  The last rock is igneous, and I totally forgot to take pictures of it.  Sorry!!!  But you give each group a piece of aluminum foil and have them make a flat bottom bowl not much bigger than the left over piece of crayon sandwich.

12.  Using a wooden clothespin, attach it to the side of the bowl.  This is the handle.

13.  Carefully using a hot plate, have the students melt the crayon sandwich (metamorphic rock)- be careful that someone is holding the handle of the bowl the entire time.

14.  Using one of your boards as a trivet, place the bowl on it to cool down.  Have students observe what happens and journal about it.

15.  When it completely cools, have the students take a small sample and tape it into their journal.

Igneous crayon rock

The finished foldable

 The next day, we drew the rock cycle, and because we had already done the lab, they really understood the process and what the diagram meant.

Hope you all have a great last few weeks of school.  ROCK ON!!! (corny I know....) :)