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Science

General Teaching

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I was asked to do a unit on energy and was looking on the internet for some really good experiments to do with second graders but I am not having good luck. Can you help? I was wondering if there were some good sites that you can think of that I could possible use. I am supposed to teach second graders about light, sound and heat energy. If you could help me out I would greatly appreciate it. answers

Where can I find sources to help unpack the a Standard. answers

How would you use text books in your science classes? answers

Process related

 

Content related

Physical science

What could be taught to third and fourth graders related to matter? --->>> matter -

I was asked to do a unit on energy and was looking on the internet for some really good experiments to do with second graders but I am not having good luck. Can you help? I was wondering if there were some good sites that you can think of that I could possible use. I am supposed to teach second graders about light, sound and heat energy. If you could help me out I would greatly appreciate it.

Part of the problem might be that energy, light, sound, and heat at the second grade level isn't included in the state or national standards. Energy is a fairly abstract concept for those in second grade. If you have to include it in your teaching my suggestion would be to select energy sources that are easily observable by second graders. For example -
force can be defined as a push and a pull and students can find interactions that have pushes or pulls and discuss that what ever provided the push or pull was an energy source. I would look for a variety of activities that students could do that involved pushes and pulls and energy of motion. FOSS has a module that includes spinners that could be used...
After they recognize that motion is a force and a force is source of energy, then I might move to sound. Find activities where they can discover that sound is the vibration of objects. When they observe that I would connect that to the idea of motion, push, pull, force, and energy.
Light and heat will be even more abstract, but after the connection idea students would probably be able to connect things that they associate with energy, electric outlets, batteries, and the need to plug objects into them that provide heat and light and therefore make their connection to energy. I also have some light activities on my internet site, but I put them together to use with fourth grade. However, I have used the mirror puzzless and different colors of cellophane or theater gel to shine flash lights at or through with second graders. About half were able to to solve the puzzles with little help after some focused explanations of what they were to investigate and the others might have understood with a few more activities.

Life science

 

Earth Science

 

Assessment

How do you decide the range of outcomes expected for students. Should it be what they are able to do after learning a standard?

To answer the question I will first describe an assessment task and possible outcomes. Let's assume that a sixth grade teacher assigns students a task of making an electric circuit (with wires, bulbs, batteries, switches, ...) that would model the way an electric circuit would be wired in a house by an electrician. The teacher makes a rubric and describes the range of outcomes for the project from - (level 1 - not attempted to not completed; level 2 - one circuit completed and working - simple circuit); level 3 - two or more different circuits completed and working (simple circuit, parallel circuit, or other); level 4 - two or more different circuits completed and working with one of the circuits being a three way switch and any other type of circuit.

Now to my thoughs about an answer. If you consider the range of outcomes for this task, there is a pretty big range of outcomes. From not even attempting the project to wiring a three way switch (which if a student understands would be a very good indication that they understood a simple, parallel, and series, circuits and their related operational definitions). However, if we look at the state standard for eight grade: 8.3.3 By the end of eighth grade, students will develop an understanding of the forms of energy and how energy is transferred.Then the range of outcomes with respect to the standard is a very small piece of the range of outcomes we would use for the standard.

While if I assigned the above project to students, I might grade them and suggest the levels of criteria for a grade, if I had to grade them. However, I wouldn't spend time in creating a written rubric for this activity or a specific activity that I couldn't use with other activities. That seems to suggest that outcomes would be related to the standards, but not developed for the sole purpose of saying that students have mastered a standard. What I would attempt to do is create outcomes that would describe what students seem to be able to do when they first arrive at school through what we would like them to be able to do to be scientifically literate. An example for --->>> classification . There are several advantages of this. 1. All teachers in a school would develop and use the same map of outcomes or rubric. Once an outcome rubric was shown to parents, it would be the same for in all grades. The outcome map or rubric could be labeled for coordination to state standards. First grade standard would coordinate with column two, and fourth grade with column ..., eight grade column ..., and so on.

Related to oucomes is rubrics, since rubrics include outcomes. Might want to check out the mini lecture --->>> making a rubric for science inquiry.

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