Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

I took a life science class for educators this summer in upstate South Carolina and one of the inquiry activities we did was with a plant in a jar. The question we were asked was how long could a plant live in a closed container. We had to come up with a hypothesis and then support our claim. Some people could not make a hypothesis without more information and we wrote those questions on our flip chart paper, i.e. How fast does a plant use up oxygen? We then planted small plants inside a plastic container (think Glad Ware) and marked the date on the outside. We were told to keep them out of direct sunlight and not to open them until we came back for our follow up class (a month later). Sadly most of our plants died. My plant died because the leaves started touching the sides and became water logged. Others died because they spent the month in direct sunlight or got rolled around in the back of their car :) The professor said it was the first time he used the glad ware contain...

I was watching a show tonight where a person was standing on ice that started to crack. They were told to lay down to spread out their weight more evenly and to start moving back to shore this way. That got me thinking about the water experiment I posted the other day and I thought you could add a different question into the mix. Does the shape of a container affect the weight of the liquid in it? So if I pour water into a cup and weigh it would it weigh the same as if I poured that same amount of liquid in a cookie sheet? It would be fun to see children discuss it and then test it (recording results in their notebook). All you would need is three different size containers one that would spread out the water in a normal way, one that would condensed the water into a tight space, and then one that spread it out. You would also need a scale that could zero out the container weight prior to adding the water. This is a simple, relatively inexpensive (I hope) experiment that could be done a...

I was at a Girl Scout camp training this weekend for adults and we had this discussion about how much a gallon of water weighs (I think we settled on 8 pounds). That got me thinking....would an 8 oz glass of water weigh the same as other liquids? Milk, orange juice, orange juice with plup, tomato juice? I thought that might make a fun classroom discussion. Students could see the different liquids being poured, make observations and then a hypothesis. They could test their weighing and measuring skills to come up with the answer.

I traveled to Oregon for a wedding this summer and flew Southwest Airlines. While I was at the airport I noticed that Southwest and Alaskan Airlines had wings that were bent up at the end. When I looked at the other planes they had the traditional flat wing style. That got me thinking...does the bent wings make the plane perform better? (Southwest had their website listed on the bent part of the wing so it could have just been an elaborate advertising ploy :) I know airplane experiments are popular but I liked the idea of showing pictures of real planes with different design styles and having students test them against traditional ones. One airplane experiment I did in sixth grade was to have students test to see if the weight of paper affects the performance of the plane. I bought three different weights of paper from Staples and we compared them, weighed them, and tested them. It was a fun experiment (can't remember the results...will have to do that one again).

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.

When teaching the scientific method to students I say that all good science starts with a good observation....which in turn often leads to a good testable question. The problem is coming up with easy, inexpensive, testable questions/experiments for the classroom to prove the point. I am always on the look out for things I can turn into science experiments which I can then have the students design and/or execute. I like to do at least three hands on experiments within the first couple weeks of school. The problem I am experiencing this year is that our third grade teachers want to start notebooking and I am helping them out. Obviously we don't want them to duplicate anything we would be doing in fourth grade so I started the great internet hunt for questions I could turn into science experiments (which lasted about 3 hours...which was all that I was good for last night). Here are some questions that I have that could be turned into experiments: 1. Do aqua globes really work? I act...

Here are three "observational" tests I give my students when I start talking about the importance of making good observations in science. The first picture students have to find the arrow on the FedEx truck. I give them 2 minutes. The second they have to find the hidden tiger. The third they have to count how many "F's" are in the sentence. That is a fun one because they have a minute to count them and they all secretly write down their number and then I have them read them out loud and rarely does anyone get the same number. The kids love being fooled. For the answers check the comments section.

I always start the year talking about safety. One of my first right hand assignments is a safety poster. This past year I also had students make safety posters for the classroom. They turned out great and stayed up the whole year (you can never go wrong with safety posters in the classroom :) I like student work much better then store bought posters and whenever I am observed one of the expectations is that we have student work posted. Having these posters up serves as both a reminder to "be safe" and as a check off on my teacher observation forms. Don't have room? See if you can hang them from the ceiling. Use a large sheet of construction paper and glue one child's poster on one side and another child's on the other....that way if they start to "spin" you always have a safety poster showing. You can also tape them on cabinets or use them as a boarder high up on the wall (just have students write/draw big so that it can be read from ground level). The f...

This week I have my students working on fortune tellers for each of our units that we have completed (weather, astronomy, light/magnets/electricity, organisms and their environment). I am not sure all the other teachers are happy now that all the fourth grade know how to make them :) I taped a quart size baggie in each of the notebooks to put them all in. This was an "end of year" project but could easily be done at the end of each unit. I used the largest paper I could get from the art room (stay away from construction paper weight...it becomes too bulky for the notebooks...the closer you can stay to regular weight paper the better). Students had to come up with eight questions and answers related to the unit (using their notebook to come up with questions). They had to illustrate and color. Aside from the initial instruction this was a largely independent project (I played some Kidz Bop CD's in class while they worked) done over five days (one day for each fortune tel...

In preparation for our upcoming end of year testing in science I am reviewing all our standards from beginning to end in the next couple of weeks. One area that students typically do poorly in is inquiry skills. To help us score better I am creating mini science experiments in class that help us review the scientific method, independent and dependant variables, graphing, what makes a fair test, etc. My hope is that by doing three or four mini tests in our classroom, before the state test next week, that students will have more recent experiences to draw from when answering these inquiry type questions. This past Friday we did two of those experiments using baking soda and vinegar. Most student knew that when you add baking soda to vinegar you get a reaction. My question I wanted students to answer was, "Does the type of vinegar change the speed of reaction?" Since the supplies were quite costly there was no way I could do this with five tables in each of my three classes w...

Monday Students worked with their clock partners to complete a "fill in the blank" study guide. We played a couple of review games and worked on vocabulary BINGO. Tuesday Reviewed for test and completed a simple dew point experiment - does the size of the container affect the dew point temperature? Wednesday End of unit test Thursday We caught up on our notebooks. I was grading and students needed to make sure they had finished everything on the pages I had listed on the board (including coloring). Friday Students watched a Blizzard video. Kind of fun since we don't get blizzards down here in the deep south.

We are ending our unit on weather this week. Next week will primarily be filling in the study guide and a few review games. Monday Checked our evaporation experiment. Reviewed water cycle from last week. Sang the song. Presented a PowerPoint I made about clouds (which includes careers that need to know about clouds - pilots, astronauts, professional fisherman, etc.). Read a notebook page about how clouds form (students drew pictures of each stage) and about the three basic type of clouds. Went outside to look at and identify cloud types (pretty disappointing...all stratus clouds but students enjoyed being outside). Tuesday Checked our evaporation experiment. Did the "cloud in the bottle" with the class. Showed a YouTube video of something similar. Introduced fronts. Used weather.com to show map, map symbols, and talked about air masses affecting the US. Acted out air masses meeting. Made inferences about our upcoming weather and checked out the 10 day forecast. Read our noteb...

This was a short week because we had Monday off for Labor Day and I had a substitute because I was selected for jury duty on Tuesday (and we all know how we just love making sub plans...ha!...luckily it was only for the one day). This is what we did for the week. Monday (with substitute) - They started a mini science fair board in their notebook for an experiment that we did involving soda and different types of coozies (this is an example of how I abandon the right hand/left hand rule....I glued mini science fair boards on both the right and left hand side because we had done two experiments). Tuesday - Group review of everything we had learned to date (lab safety, observations / inferences / predictions, qualitative and quantitative observations, scientific method, and variables). I explained that while we had filled out lab data sheets for our experiments we still needed to present our information in a more user friendly format (hence the mini science fair boards - I was trying to ...

Last week we have been focusing on the steps of the scientific method and identifying variables in an experiment . Notebook Activities DAY 1 Left Hand Side - Steps of the scientific method in order with explanation of each step. Whole group instruction. Right Hand Side Activity - Students created a poster of the scientific method with steps, pictures, and color. Day 2 Left and Right Side - Lab paperwork (see picture above). We were testing out the effectiveness of different coozies . Students took the temperature of their soda in the coozie every 5 minutes for 20 min. Students watched a taped episode of Food Detectives - How To Cool Your Mouth After Eating Spicy Foods (scientists mention the scientific method during the part where they test the 5 second rule for food dropped on the floor) in between the timing of the soda. Reviewed the steps of the scientific method before and during the experiment and during the TV Show. Day 3 Reviewed scientific method (we had it down as a chant b...

I was online looking for independent/dependant variable lesson/practice for students and came across this excellent site . The teacher has posted PowerPoint lessons and activity sheets that can easily be modified for incorporation into science notebooks. I saved quite a few and plan to cut and paste what I think will work with my groups this year both for the notebooks and for quizzes. Not looking for variable information? I still encourage you to check it out because she has PowerPoints from "What Is a Scientist?" to using the metric system.

Here is a link that I got from Marcia Krech who posted in response on My Science Lessons Blog (link to the right "my blog list"). It is a lab safety "What Not To Do" activity that I thought would be easy to add to the notebook, with the picture on the left hand side and the match up sheet (found at the linked site) that students have to fill out on the right hand side. Thank you Marcia!

This was another fabulous idea I got from another teacher (thank you Ms. Larson!) and tweaked. In the middle school last year I was SHOCKED at the amount of new vocabulary students had to learn in the sixth grade (I am equally shocked at the limited amount of new vocabulary fourth graders have to learn in comparison...oh well). To help students remember the vocabulary word and its definition we played BINGO, usually within the last 10 minutes of class if we had extra time or more often the closer we were to a big test or state exam. Here is how it works. Put together a list of 24 vocabulary words for a unit. I was struggling to find 24 words in one unit and pulled words from another unit we had done to round it out. For the notebook, I put the words in Microsoft Publisher "catalog format" and gave it a cover so I could fold and glue into the book (see next to last and last picture). I then made a BINGO board in word (using their "table" format) making sure to have ...

These are examples of classroom activities (labs) that my students did where they had to record information in their notebook. In the first example we read and highlighted information about dichotomous keys on the left hand side and then students had to create a dichotomous key using the people in the classroom on the right hand side. We also watched a movie and did a key together before that activity. In the second picture students were learning how to use the triple beam balance and then had to record the mass of various objects in their notebook. These pictures are presented to show you how you can use your notebooks for even "minor" classroom labs.

This activity could have easily gone into student notebooks but I had students take them home to help them prepare for our science fair. Students were involved in a classroom experiment and then had to create miniature science boards and lab books that mimicked what was being asked of them when they turned in their actual science fair boards (from what page contains what information in the lab book to the placement of pictures and graphs on the board). It was really a fun project and the even though it took some prep work (making all those mini lab books) the students really got into it. It was a two day process. One for the experiment and recording some information in the lab book and the next day to finish the boards and lab book. I am not a huge fan of science fairs in general but I really try and prepare my students and parents for what is expected. I have a "science fair center" on my website at http://www.mrsheatonsclass.com/ and anyone is welcome to view what I hav...

Once labs are finished I have students put all the information on a "mini" science fair board that gets glued into the book. All our elementary and middle school students are required to participate in our science fair (from fourth grade up) and I was trying to show them how easy it is to do. I used the Dinah Zike shutterfold foldable and had students put information generally required for a science board on the foldable from the experiment. I wasn't able to get all the required information in but enough to show students that science fair projects didn't have to be overwhelming. Students love anything miniature so I never got any fussing when they had to complete their boards.