Week 4 Elementary Science

 

  1. The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did.
This week in the lab, we discussed swings and which item would fall faster to the ground. We discussed and chose to experiment the length of the chain, and whether the length of the chain completes more swings if its shorter or longer. So first, we created a question and hypothesis, which is shown in the picture below. Then we cut two strings to different lenths and tied them to two washers to model the swing. After that, we clamped a wooden rod to the tale and hung out swings from the wooden rod. We then set a 5 second timer and track how many times there was a completed swing. We then found out our hypothesis was right that the shorter chain did more swings in 5 seconds than the longer chain. 


  1. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture.
    1. In lecture this week, we talked about more motion and the direction of the arrows when a swing is in motion. We also talked about energy and what is energy. I think that it is interesting going back over these, because I forgot a lot about the direction of gravity and friction, and the basics on energy. 
  2. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading:
    1. What did you learn?
      1. I learned about different ideas for helping students and teachers throughout science lessons. It talked about giving students formative assessments to help the teacher plan lessons that can help all students learn the ideas that we are trying to learn better. 
    1. What was most helpful?
      1. The most helpful idea was about the formative assessment you can give to students to figure out students' abilities and challenges which can help us teachers create lesson plans, and adapt to these students' challenges. 
    2. What do you need more information on?
      1. I need more information on what we do with this formative assessment and how we adapt our lesson plans to these challenges. I think it is important for teachers to recognize different students' needs and abilities, but how do we make a lesson plan for all of these accommodations. 
    3. What questions/concerns/comments do you have?
      1. How do we plan with students challenged when we have NGSS standards to follow?

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