Week In Science - Light, Electricity and Magnets

Monday - We started our new unit on Light, Electricity and Magnets with our title page and a sneak peek of our vocabulary for the unit, which we then put together in our BINGO boards. I put together a PowerPoint of the vocabulary with pictures and went through it while students wrote the words on their bingo board. Students became excited for the unit because I was able to show them pictures of things they will be putting together in the unit (electromagnets, series circuits, etc.).

Tuesday - Properties of Light. Revised several Promethean Planet resources into a lesson. Students read their notebook page on the left hand side. We did a couple of in class examples of light traveling in a straight line with a flashlight and how distance affects brightness. I went over how to make a web using information from the left hand side with students. Then students were tasked with making a web on the right hand side using the highlighted key points. I showed the BrainPop video "Rainbows". Students went outside with Prisms.

Wednesday - Refraction, Reflection, Absorption. Had made waves of light out of paper that I had laminated.. Demonstrated how light refracts (covered with prisms the day before), reflects, and absorbs. Had students take turn with my waves of light (students wearing different colored tops got to come up and other students got to put the waves down the shirt of the colors that got absorbed and then "refracted" the light color that we see). Students made an "r" with their pointer finger (and said "refraction" - think of how the little boy in the shining would have done "redrum" and that is how I had them do it, they hugged each other to demonstrate absorbption, and bounced off each other for reflection.

Thursday - Reviewed light to date, read the left hand assignement from yesterday (I am putting some AIMES rubberband books about light on the right hand side next week). Practiced our Refraction, Reflection, Absorption. Watched Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow with students. Made connections to what we have been discussing in class.

Friday - Quick review. Students took 10 question quiz. We made secret messages using the book Color Analyzers - Investigating Light and Color (GEMS Teacher's Guide for Grades 5-8) and red jello. This tied into our discussion of absorbtion and reflection of light. Students made their own secret messages.

Comments

Secret Messages - How To (Light and Color)

This was fun activity that I got from Roper Mountain Science Institute. They suggested red theater gel to reveal the message, which can get pricy. Another idea I heard was to ask movie theaters to donate left over 3D glasses, which also have a red filter. A guest speaker we had last year said red jello would work. Tried it this week and it worked like a charm. The students thought it was very cool. I found my "attention challenged" students had trouble focusing on making their own secret messages so I was very glad that I had made extra copies of the sheets from the GEMS Color Analyzer book that they could color and then check under the jello.

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

QR Project - Open House

Twitter Post Link - https://bit.ly/3Umic7r I saw this adorable QR code project on Twitter and decided to try it out with a couple of third grade classes. We have several schools in our district who are "Leader in Me" schools and I asked a teacher if I could come in and make them for her open house (you don't need to be a "Leader in Me" school but I know they do a lot of goal setting and mission statements). She loved the idea! I decided to use Flip (formally Flipgrid) to do the recording. The web based program is free for educators and automatically generates the needed QR code. We started on a Thursday. I pulled students into the hall to get a picture of them holding a square piece of paper prior to an ELA block. The paper acted as a place holder for the QR code (which is square) and ensured I got the correct hand spacing so the students looked like they were holding the QR code. I found a spot that didn't have anything in the background. The background...

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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