Skip to main content

Scientific Method - 3rd Grade


I was invited to teach the scientific method in a third grade classroom today and had a blast! As most of you know, I am out of the classroom this year in a technology coach position and a part of my job is to model the use of technology in the classroom. I told the teacher (who is going to try notebooking this year) that I found some fun scientific method songs on YouTube and she asked me to come in and teach.

We went through the steps of the scientific method and used it to answer the question, "Do taller children have bigger feet then smaller children?" In the picture above the students collected their data (drew a bar the size of their feet) and used a ruler to measure their graph and record their results. We talked about the data and what conclusions we could draw from the graph. The kids enjoyed the activity and (of course) loved getting to take off their shoes.

Comments

Ms. Christina said…
This is simple idea that sounds really effective. Love it!
kherbert said…
I'm going to try this with my 2nd graders next week. Thanks for posting.
Anonymous said…
Using this tomorrow! Thanks!
Unknown said…
Where can I find your lesson plans for this?
Anonymous said…
Did this with my group of 3rd graders! They loved it!!
Anonymous said…
Thanks, will certainly give this a try next measurement lesson.

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Citizen Cards

This project idea came from a monthly challenge put out by Adobe Express. We have the free EDU version deployed in our district and I thought this might be fun to try with a class. I liked that there was a prize element where the students could win a classroom set of hero cards  and it tied in with Digital Citizenship Week (October 17-21).  I teamed up with an elementary technology lab teacher and we decided to try it with one fifth grade class.  We looked over the available templates and decided we liked the layout of the 6-8 template the best (because they had to list advice for staying safe online).  One of the best things about these Adobe monthly challenge templates is that they can be modified. The revised template can then be sent to students via a link or through Google Classroom.  All the templates for this challenge Adobe gives you a sample template with sample wording but we wanted students to come up with their own wording. Neither one of us was ke...

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.

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock...