This week, we ended our time in the watershed and began exploring atoms, elements, molecules and all things matter.
On Monday, we played a review game and took our end of the unit assessment on the watershed. As both a teacher and the mayor of Gleasonia, I am proud of how well my scientists did. There was a clear understanding of what we had learned in science thus far.
On Tuesday, in order to "launch" ourselves into the new quarter, we built catapults. Students were introduced to the idea of "punkin' chunkin'" were teams design and build catapults to launch pumpkins the farthest. With the same goal in mind, but on a much smaller scale, the class was divided into 4 groups, given the same materials (rubber bands, popsicle sticks, straws, tap, a cup, and a spoon), 5 minutes to plan and 20 minutes to build. At the end of the time, teams came up to the line and launched their tiny pumpkins. Each team got two tries to see who could go the furthest. Although some of our teams sent their pumpkins behind their group, we had several that had very good showings. Below are pictures of each team and the winners from each class.
With no school on Wednesday, the new quarter and our new unit, matter, began when we returned to school on Thursday. We started with students identifying what the term property meant and why understanding properties was important. To make this idea more concrete, each table group was given a variety of materials to investigate and identify properties, any that they chose. We had groups look at texture, color, size, mass, and smell, just to name a few. Then, the class was asked to read about matter and determine if what they observed in the investigation was supported in the text - did their items behave in the way that the different forms of matter were supposed to?
Finally, on Friday, students were charged with determining if air was a form of matter. Although we know that gas is a state of matter, how can it be, when it does not seem to have the characteristics of matter (have mass and take up space). The kids observed balloons on a hanging scale, they learned that molecules of air exert pressure on all things, all the time, and finally they watched air pressure crush a train's tanker car. On Monday, we will continue with this investigation with more hands-on investigations.