Scientific Inquiry and Curiosity

Unrelated, but related, picture of the Mars Rover Curiosity. 

As both a teacher and a learner, I feel that the essence of scientific inquiry should be curiosity. When we lose curiosity, we lose the drive to learn and innovate; we stop growing, and believe in order to be an effective teacher, you should never stop growing.

In my concept map, I had to limit myself; the more brainstorming I did, the more connections I made, all stemming from scientific inquiry. I'm happy with the end product, and I think I will carry this with me and add to it as I grow as a professional, teacher, and learner.

Are You Smarter Than a Fourth Grader?

One of the most frustrating things, I think, about scientific inquiry is that sometimes you may not ever have a definitive answer to a question. Further more, answers you find may only lead to more questions. 

That's the thing though; scientific inquiry is learning, and learning, well, just isn't clean cut. It's messy, and jumbled, and many times discombobulating. 

I think that as both learners and teachers, we need to become comfortable with the feeling of not knowing. At the heart of learning, it's okay to not know something, be wrong, and make mistakes. It is said that people, adults specifically, fear what they don't understand; I think that that fear is derived from a deep-seated intimidation of the uncertainty inherent in the unknown. However, in order to further ourselves as teachers and furthermore, enable our students to become scientific thinkers, we need to learn how to embrace the uncertain and the unknown. We need to learn that it's okay to be wrong, to not know an answer, and to make mistakes along the way. That's where learning happens!

I think this is why our PBL activity where we had to design a transportation device for a marble using only certain items given to us was one of my favorite classes this semester. If the first iteration of your design didn't work, then you were able to go back to the drawing board, discuss, question, redesign, and test again. It was fantastic!
Check out some of the groups' test runs below:

 

Science and Bubble Gum

The heart of scientific inquiry, I feel, is curiosity. What better way to explore and encourage both than through bubble gum!

 

It was fun and engaging lesson and activity for graduate students- I can only hope to have the same effect with my future elementary/middle school students. I love that you can take a simple concept such as questioning which bubble gum brand makes the biggest bubbles, or which stretches the furthest, or which maintains its flavor the longest and explore all of the scientific process skills: raising questions, predicting, planning and conducting investigations, explaining/hypothesizing, interpreting evidence, and communicating results. 



What a fantastic way to introduce these concepts to young learners. With this type of PBL activity, you can meet standards in the elementary grades (2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade Embedded Inquiry), and further apply this to middle and high school standards by further discussing physical and chemical properties.

What I remember of learning the scientific method in school left me feeling bored and disinterested. I distinctly remember there being more emphasis put into the steps taken rather than the process skills (that should have been) being developed. In contrast, I feel that PBL investigations such as the bubble gum activity we carried out in class can introduce the core concepts of scientific inquiry while encouraging the inherent curiosity needed to develop a scientifically literate mind in young learners.

Silly Slime!

So we recently participated in Math and Science Night at Kittrell Elementary. After much deliberation and several changes of ideas, I decided that I would have the kids make something fun and Halloween-esque: enter silly slime!

Materials: 

• Elmer's Glue (not the Dollar Store knock off!! Use the brand name)
• Borax (for much thicker consistency; as you'll read, using other detergents just doesn't work as well)
• Ziplock bags for easy clean up
• Measuring spoons for the math portion of the activity

Optional: 

• food coloring

The tutorial video I used:



And here's where I found the Borax-free* recipe:
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2015/02/slime-recipes-kid-tested-teacher-approved

*I chose to use the Borax-Free recipe as I didn't know any of the children attending, and therefore had no idea of any potential allergies.

All-in-all, the night was a success in terms of student engagement (I'm not quite sure how happy the parents may have been with me, though...). A highlight of the night was hearing the commentary from the kids ("How does it DO that?" "It's not a liquid or a solid...what IS it?"); apart from the 'mess' factor, they seemed to be genuinely interested in the activity.

What I really liked about this activity is the applicability across several grades; you can meet 2nd and 3rd grade standards by measuring out the ingredients, discussing ingredient ratios, experimenting with color combinations, and discussing homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures and defining a solution in a fun way. You can then extend this to go into 8th, 9th, and 10th grade standards and discuss the physical and chemical properties of polymers, hypothesizing and experimenting with changes in recipes, and graphing the results.

If I were to do this again, I would definitely like to do it with Borax, however, this does still worry me as going into a classroom with potential allergies, I would have to be careful in how much the student would come into contact with the Borax itself.

The Great Fossil Find and NSTA Book Fair

I had the opportunity recently to teach a science lesson in a 5th class a friend of mine teaches. I had been dying to do the Great Fossil Find activity with a group, and this seemed like a great opportunity to do so.

The kids LOVED it. Every single one was engaged, asking questions, discussing possibilities. It was great getting them to think and hypothesize; a key part of the activity is that you never have all of the pieces to the fossil, and an option in teaching the activity is to never tell the class what type of animal the pieces come together to be. However, because this was a one-off lesson, I chose to tell the class at the very end; they were able to compare the final animal with what they had pictured, and just about every group had certain characteristics spot on. (I think that every single one of them may have killed me if I hadn't told them the dinosaur in the end!)

It was fascinating seeing the process skills being applied in these kids; the end goal of the activity wasn't the fossils themselves but the critical thinking required to hypothesize and discuss. It's a wonderful activity that summarizes the essence of scientific inquiry, and I plan to use it in my own classroom every year.

"COME BUY SOME BOOKS!" - totally-not-creepy Scholastic stick puppet

On a totally seperate subject, the NSTA is hosting their annual scholastic book sale in the Science Building; come buy some books...for SCIENCE!

811: Always Call, It's the Law

So we had the great pleasure of having a Mr. Cliff Swoape come into our class last week for a gas safety demonstration. Mr. Swoape works for the Middle Tennessee Natural Gas Utility District as the Manager of Safety & Training, so he knows his stuff.

He gave us the spiel he typically does for the 4th graders he visits in the utility district his company services. It may sound boring, some engineer coming in to talk about gas pipelines and infrastructure, but you'd be surprised. Using methane gas, oxygen, and a spark, he illustrated the 3 ingredients needed to create fire (Fuel, Oxygen, and Ignition Source).

 And it was SO. COOL.

While much of what Mr. Swoape discussed with our class was familiar territory for me*, I don't think I could have enjoyed his presentation more. What a fantastic way to engage kids in STEM areas at an impressionable age with FIRE of all things.
Something I found interesting, however, was that Mr. Swoape made the comment that around 4th grade is the age when girls begin to turn away from interests in the STEM fields, which is one reason he feels that demonstrations like his are so vital to bring into a classroom at that age . While I couldn't find research to support that statement, I did find that a study published in 2011 that found a definitive gap between the amount of women in a STEM career versus men (4:1, men to women). And that makes me so sad.

Growing up, I was surrounded by individuals immersed in the STEM fields; it has always been confusing to me why we seem to have fewer and fewer women professionals in the harder sciences. However, I can't help but feel a little hypocritical feeling that way as I myself, with my family of engineers, math teachers, and machinists, have gone the route of hippotherapist then school teacher (however, I do intend on pursuing an Ed.S. and a PhD, so maybe that will get my back on track). Hopefully I can have an impact on my future students, girls and boys, and inspire them (somehow!) to stay interested in the STEM subjects.

*Some background: my dad, a mechanical engineer, has worked in the Natural Gas industry for all of his adult life, and is currently a Senior Project Manager of a major US energy company. I have had the fortune of growing up in a family of engineers, and the 811 sticker was a common sight in my house, along with with the logos of various gas and mineral companies and associations such as the American Gas Association, Tennessee Gas Association, Nashville Gas Co., Caddum Inc., Southern Natural Gas Co., and others branded in one way or another on stickers, lanyards, notepads, pens, and ball caps- these chachkis evidence of my dad's work in his field (his extras were often my playthings; I'm pretty sure you might find a few hard hats sitting next to careworn dolls on the shelves of my childhood room). One of my brothers is also a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry (he designs performance tires), while the other is an AGS Specialist for a mineral rights company (he makes topographical maps). My mom was a high school Calculus and English Comp teacher, and holds degrees in both Math and English.

Pass the Jug...Or Not.

So we didn't get to play in the creek as planned...

C'est la vie...

...BUT we did get to play with some fantastic activities from the Project WET textbook. My group had the fortune of playing with the Pass the Jug activity (p. 392-96 in the Project WET text).

As I've stated before, many, if not most/all, of the Project WET activities can be integrated across subject areas fairly easily. What I really liked about my group's activity was that beyond giving students a physical, observable (i.e. easily graspable) representation of water rights and distribution, there are many different directions a teacher might be able to take this activity. For instance, it could be integrated with social studies and current events for the higher grade levels, opening up the possibility for discussion and student-driven research into current problems (such as the recent drought in California) and possible solutions to those problems. 

I do not envy these guys right now.

Now, I have a confession to make. After seeing the fantastic effort put into their activities by my classmates, I feel like I could have done a (MUCH) better job at preparing for this activity. I really wish I had looked more closely into the extensions for the activity and used food coloring to better illustrate the affect of upstream activities on downstream users and water sources (and I'm sure the rest of the class wishes I had gone with the text's suggested version of the activity for K-2nd grade, which uses candy instead of water to illustrate water distribution rights. I wonder why...?).

The other activities were all fantastic, and I truly enjoyed every one of them. However, if I were to pick a favorite, it would have to have been the Water Olympics activity. This activity reminded me once again why Project WET is just so cool; used in a classroom, this is a great activity to introduce the physical properties of water in its liquid state and the concept of surface tension. It can also be a fun, engaging way to review these concepts before a test or to informally assess student understanding midway through a unit.