Physical Chemical Changes

 

Student Work Sample

Reflections of a Lesson

The lesson implemented this week focused on physical and chemical changes.  To activate prior knowledge of students were given two different types of nails in a cup of water to observe the weekend. Observations were made in a journal and were asked  to include any questions they made have had.  Discussion were held the following Monday.  I posed a couple questions to them , What caused the rust ? and why did one nail rust and not the other one?

Excellent transition to the main inquiry of the lesson, an excellent tranisiton into the focus of the inquiry, whether a substance undergoes a chemical or physical change and the sings that would indicate a change.

Students rotated to each of the six science centers performing the simple experiments in their cooperative learning groups. Data was entered on the group's data charts. Abundant conversations took place during the investigations. My co-teacher and myself facilitated groups by encouraging groups in science conversation. and to take risks. We used this time to informally assess knowledge of the content and reconcile any differences any of the groups had about their reasoning or answers.

The assessments I differentiated were due to the diverse learning styles in the inclusion classroom. They consisted of, but not in any particular order, a pencil and paper test, a reading passage where students underlined the physical and chemical changes, each group presented  findings of a particular center and then presented it to the class. the fourth which is on-going process is the development of a PowerPoint presentation on physical and chemical changes.
 

Improvements and/or revisions that I would make would be to integrate  more technology into the lesson, by having the students themselves increase their use digital cameras in the recording of their observations. Another would to make available the use of computers to research a question that they may have during their investigation. 

Time constraints had a part to play in the formation of this lesson.  At the elementary level science is not taught on a daily basis and needed to double up on subject areas.

The lesson provided me with positive observations.  Students finely tuned their observation and improve their reasoning skills. Positive interaction took place among the students. A degree of student dialogue took place among the students in the groups.  This lesson made me aware of the need to revisit science unit/lessons that I have constructed during the past couple of years to revise them and correspond to the types of scientific inquiry.
 

Melting Iceberg Experiment

This science investigation, simplistic in nature,  provided intriguing insights into the characteristics  and behavior of water in the various states of matter (ie- solid and liquid) especially for students at an early elementary level.  Science principles of displacement and density were also observed as the ice was placed in the water and continued with the melting process.

If, a big if,  the polar ice caps were to melt at a significant  rate, the melting  can have more of  an effect on climate than a rise of sea levels as a whole. It also depends on which polar ice cap is doing the melting.  The northern polar ice cap, which rests on the Arctic Ocean, is mainly comprised of icebergs , except the ice cap on Greenland.  Icebergs do not raise sea levels when melting because they are floating and have already displaced water they are going to (Kluger, 2006). This is evidenced by the experiment performed. There was no overflow of water as the ice cubes melted. As mentioned in the Time Magazine article, climate can be affected  by the introduction of freshwater into the  ocean effecting the salinity of the ocean. The example given in the article is the Gulf Stream. The southern polar ice cap overlays the Antarctic continent, contains 70% of the worlds freshwater, is unlikely to melt. The average temperature in Antarctica  averages -37 degrees C (How Stuff Works, 2010).

The are several questions I have in regards to this investigation.
a. How can I adapt or modify this investigation to 4th or 5th grade students that have little background knowledge on the subject of global warming. 
b. Would I need to provide background knowledge to the students in the form of this same investigation to teach the students properties, characteristics and behavior of water before introducing global warning?
  

STEM Lesson

I was briefly exposed to the 5E's four years ago in an extensive summer professional development course in science content/pedagogy at one of the state colleges in NJ. I have not used it since this weekend. It is great for the unit/lesson or investigation that will encompass several science periods lasting a couple of weeks. There was some similarity to how I have to write my lesson plans now.  It includes everything from activating prior knowledge, posing thought provoking  questions, engaging students in effective lessons, connecting them to real-life lessons and situations and using types of assessments to evaluate student progress.


The lesson that I purposely chose was a lesson that I taught several years ago that integrates engineering and science. The lesson shows how an environmental engineer  solves a problem and designs a water filtration system to clean contaminated water.  From there the students are placed into "design teams", and experiment on items that filter water the best.  They then proceed to use the "engineering design process," to draw, design and implement their own water filter,  then have an opportunity to improve their design. A culminating activity is that each design team presents and communicates their findings to the class using a presentation software like PowerPoint. 

What was most time consuming in this application is the multiple standards that I researched for this lesson.

From a logistical and practical point of view,  and to cover all of the 5E's effectively this unit lesson will need several class periods to accomplish which approximately lasts a couple of weeks.