Today we finished our last pendulum trials with our longest pendulums. Some kids had to hang them from the ceiling! We used our pendulums to create a visual graph and discussed trend lines and outliers. Kids did a great job with this part of the unit. We will continue with our graphs and work with fair tests and variables on Monday.
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Today we completed our second number puzzle (Friday start activity) and discussed strategies to figure out the number of unit cubes needed to fill a prism (find the volume). Students shared their ideas and we expanded up the idea of repeated layers of the same size. Students also showed what they knew about volume in a writing activity.
Some students worked with me during WIN to review misconceptions from last night's homework. Today we started our trials with the length of the pendulum as the manipluated variable. Each group has 4 different length pendulums that they will use for their data. We will look at the class data to see how/if length affects the number of circuits. At this point we have conducted 2 full fair tests and are part way through our third. Students will be completing a slip next week to gauge their level of understanding of what makes an experiment a "fair test" and identifying specific variables.
I didn't get any pictures today, but hope to show you our work tomorrow. Today we worked with centimeter cubes to start to find volume of rectangular prisms with standard units. Students then needed to apply their hands-on work to standard problems where the number of cubes were determined using the dimensions. We completed pages 18 and 19 in student math journals. This will be mirrored in their homework tonight. HOMEWORK TONIGHT: HOME LINK 1-7 REQUIRED, HOME LINK 1-8 FOR CHALLENGE. Today (tomorrow for Newtons) we continued our work with volume. Students started by drawing a rectangle on their paper and brainstorming what they would say to someone who asked them to find the volume. Students shared their ideas with their desk groups and then with the whole class. We then worked in small groups to figure out the volume of a prism (an empty jumbo paperclip box) using non-standard units (various shaped pattern blocks). At first students just dumped a pile into the box and called it good so we talked about using the unit to take up as much space as possible which may require changing the pieces around to make the fit better. We ended up only really getting through one shape, so students will continue this in their next class. HOMEWORK TONIGHT: HOMELINK 1-6 ***ARBOURS ONLY ON TUESDAY, WILL BE ASSIGNED TO NEWTONS ON WEDNESDAY*** Today the Arbours (Newtons will do this on Wednesday) worked on developing a hypothesis and testing to see if the angle of the pendulum's release affected the number of circuits that it could complete. We reviewed class data and students wrote their conclusions siting 3 pieces of data. On Thursday we will test out the length of the pendulums.
Today we worked on our trials for our pendulums. We took the scientific method through the steps to reinforce what we we have been working on in class. Each group worked through trials of adding weight to their pendulums to see how it affects the number of circuits that they could complete. We will continue our work with pendulums throughout the week. Today we took the class period to go over the routines of our number puzzles which will be done on most Fridays. The number puzzles are a set of 10 clues that use math skills/knowledge to determine a correct number. We did the first one as a class to help all students understand how to do the puzzle so that they can be independent moving forward. You can see in the picture our first puzzle and underlined in red-all of the different math concepts that are being applied.
Today we took our Steps of the Scientific Method quiz. Students will get these back next week.
We also brainstormed a list of possible variables to test to answer our question; "What will change the number of circuits that a pendulum can complete?" Of the variables on the list, we will test three as a class. We continued working our way through the Scientific Method by coming up with a hypothesis for one of the variables and developing a procedure to test it. (See pics) Next week we will begin the first round of our trials. Today we started talking about our first activity around fair tests and design problems. We worked to make observations about our string/penny pendulums as we gathered information to help us answer the question about "What will change the number of circuits a pendulum can complete?" We will use our observations from today to delve into what variables we can test and how to go about doing that.
Scientific Method Steps Quiz tomorrow I am having a hard time uploading the pictures from today- I will do so as soon as I can get them to work. |
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