(For Efolio) Science Experiment Feb. 2, 2021Nathaniel Amankwah (Student) - Pull-Back Car Experiment Sheet Astrid Roman Polanco (Student) - Pull-Back Car Experiment Sheet Tatiana Marshall (Student) - Tuning Fork Experiment Sheet Rania Sidik (Student) - Tuning Fork Experiment Sheet

Rube Goldberg Machine Jamboard

Energy Sources Pros and ConsFor Efolio - Jacob Hiatt Energy Letters from the Fourth Grade

I feel as though throughout this unit, students have continuously answered and expanded on the essential question: How can we analyze the energy of an object? In the first lesson, students engaged with energy by interacting with a virtual pendulum and various environments, including environments with different levels of gravity and friction, and they were able to further engage with this tool by changing the mass of the pendulum, the height from which it was dropped, and the length of the string to which it was attached.  This allowed students to experience a variety of different situations, and every student was able to bring a different observation to our discussions.  In our first experiment, we explored how we can use pull-back cars to make determinations about the relationship between potential energy, speed, and kinetic energy.  We also explored the transfer of energy in our second experiment by testing tuning forks under various circumstances. Additionally, we explored transfer of energy in Rube Goldberg Machines through videos and drawings which depicted energy transfer in the design of the machines.  Through all of these explorations, students were able to explain what they noticed about potential and kinetic energy, as well as the transfer of various kinds of energy among objects.  Students elaborated on their explanations by coming together, sharing their observations, and coming to collaborative conclusions during our experiments. Finally, students were evaluated on the quality of their observation notes throughout both of the two experiments, their Jamboard discussions, and their performance on the Jeopardy review game and the accompanying quiz.  These evaluations showed that students of different levels of content knowledge and learning abilities were able to make valuable contributions to class conversation and prove what they knew through the review game and quiz.  Then, throughout our exploration of renewable and nonrenewable resources, students made thoughtful observations after reviewing articles and videos, filled out the energy sources pros and cons chart, and used the information they gathered to form opinions about energy resources and back up their opinions with evidence.  Overall, I am happy with my students’ performances throughout this unit.

Though I was pleased with the overall results of the various learning assessments in this unit, there were some discrepancies in the performances of students that interested me.  Several students really enjoyed many of the hands-on activities included in the unit, such as the virtual pendulum experiment, the two real-life experiments, and the review Jeopardy game, but performed poorly on the science quiz.  This was surprising to me because many of the students who failed the same students that offered some of the most complex, interesting, and knowledgeable observations and conclusions throughout the more interactive assignments.  I am concerned that this thoughtfulness and level of content knowledge did not translate to a quiz layout, even though the quiz questions were taken directly from the Jeopardy review game, and students had access to the same resources that they did when they were playing the review game.  In the future, I will need to do more to ensure that students are carrying their scientific discoveries with them beyond the day of the experiment. 

I learned that I can engage students by allowing them to interact with the world around them in an inquisitive and analytical way by including virtual and hands-on experiments in my unit, and giving them opportunities to apply the concepts they learned to the world around them.  It is best not to tell students about the scientific principles embedded in the content standards — let them tell it!  By providing students with the vocabulary needed to explain their findings, students are free to develop their own hypotheses, perform their own experiments, and come to their own conclusions, as well as develop their own opinions in writing and support them with evidence. I learned that students from a variety of learning contexts can participate in these activities with enthusiasm and deliver thoughtful input about the scientific concepts we are discussing.

One issue I did not fully account for was the impact of students’ family lives and socioeconomic statuses on their ability to complete the experiments.  While some students had family members available to participate and help with the experiments, other students were home alone without an adult.  Even though the materials were sent home to students from the Worcester Public Schools, many students lost or broke their materials, and did not have an adult with them to help find or fix the necessary items.  This issue was compounded by the fact that many of the materials were already broken when students received them, such as pull-back cars with broken wheels.  Some students were able to replace these broken materials, while others were not.

If I were to conduct this unit again, I would try to use experiments that required less materials.  On top of the fact that many students had lost or broken materials at the time of the experiment, the set-up was cumbersome and some students were exhausted before the experiment had even begun.  I noticed that the second experiment of the unit, which required less materials and a much quicker set-up, went much more smoothly. I would also address the other major issue of the unit, which was that the significant progress in content knowledge that students made throughout the unit did not translate to their performance on the quizzes.  I realized that while all of my lessons were very hands-on, the only familiarity students had with quiz-style questions was during the review game immediately before the quiz.  All other information was provided through their experiment sheets or discussion jamboards.  In the future, I would like to include some exit slips in these lessons, to get students used to the idea of taking what they learned in a hands-on experiment and using it to answer quiz style questions.  I believe that if I did those things, students would have performed better on the final assessment of the quiz.  However, overall, I am proud of the work I did on this unit, and while the quiz results were not spectacular, the class average was very solid.  I know that I will take many ideas that I created and used in this unit and use them in future units, both in science and other subjects.  Teaching this unit and seeing my students’ enthusiasm was so much fun!