Pedal the Cause 2015

Just wanted to share what a great time I had at Pedal the Cause today.  It was my first official cycling event and I was a little intimidated but it was an amazing experience.  Got to ride with a good buddy who first got me into cycling, had wonderful weather, and the positive vibe of everyone there supporting a great cause was phenomenal.

The race took place in Chesterfield and as someone new to the area, so to speak, it was great to tour around and see the locales that border CDS.  The start of the race even went right by the corner or Conway and White.  Truth be told, the hills around Babler about killed me, but the pay off along Wild Horse Creek was worth it. I kept thinking to myself... "there would be a cool place to look for macroinvertebrates" or "oh! I bet we could catch a bunch of crayfish there" or "I wonder if the bus could get down that road?"  Ah, such is the lens you see from as a science teacher.

I think that opportunities like this are great ways for teachers to model goal setting and persistence for their students.  There's a lot of talk these days about grit and perseverance and it's correlation with academic achievement and I think it's important for students to see that these same challenges still exist for adults.  It may not be homework or reading assignments, but the same principles are involved whether we're talking about lifetime fitness, building a small business, learning a new trade/skill/foreign language, etc. Goal setting, time on task, determination, and ultimately, celebration!!!

Birds, Lakes, and Celebrations of Learning!

Whenever the blog goes silent you know there are some amazing things happening in science class and there's not even enough time to share the awesome.  

Wanted to start the latest recap of the happenings in 4-5-6 Science by sharing some warm and fuzzies...  As you may recall Lisa Nansteel, Vice President of Education for the St. Louis Audubon Society, and her team visited CDS last week to teach our Grade 5-6 students the basics of bird identification.  She also worked with Grade 4 on classifying animals using binomial nomenclature.  After her visit I received an email from her saying, "We enjoyed working with you and especially your students.  It is not often we get to work with so many intelligent and well mannered children at one time!"  

We know we have great students at CDS, but it's always nice to hear it from outside visitors too!

                       

Grade 4 Science

Now that we have completed our initial investigations using the metric system we're ready to dive into our unifying theme of water!  We began our studies by walking to The Lake on White Road in our neighboring subdivision.  Before leaving for the lake the students calculated the distance of their walking pace in metric.  Then they counted how many steps they each took on the hike to the lake.  Below the students are seen recording their data on the way.  

When we got back from the lake the students calculated their total steps taken, converted that number to meters, and then calculated that to miles. The lake ended up being about .6 miles away for those keeping score at home.

While at the lake we found this guy...

We also threw out a crayfish trap and let it soak for 24hrs.  Here's the shot-by-shot results...

Bubkus!  So far this year we're 0-2 with the crayfish trap (even with 24hr soaks!)  I'm not too upset about it, because it's like I always tell the kids "ZERO is a result!"  Hopefully, we'll have much better luck when we head to the creeks to do our macroinvertebrate collection in a couple of weeks.

Back in the classroom, the students began to explore the amazing properties that make water essential for life.  Students are shown here predicting how many drops of water they can fit onto a penny.  The average predictions was between 5-10, but the students learned that due to the cohesion and surface tension created by the water molecules they could actually fit between 30-50 drops!

                     

We ended the week talking about how humans are made up of 60-70% water... but where exactly is that water?  In our cells of course!  Students looked at the cells in the inner layers of skin in onions using microscopes to conceptualize how water is stored in our bodies.  They also learned valuable strategies for effective microscope use.  The students recorded this information in their science notebooks by diagramming what they saw, describing what they saw, and then comparing and contrasting what they could see with their naked eye vs the microscope.  It's great home support to ask your child to see their science notebook.  Have them summarize what we are working on in class and ask them how they chose to organize their information and their thinking.  Giving them feedback on their written explanations and descriptions goes a long way towards reinforcing what we are doing in the classroom.

                               

                               

NEXT WEEK:  We will be going canoeing on Tuesday at Simpson Lake to learn water safety, basic paddling skills, and collecting abiotic data to perform chemical water quality testing.

Grades 5 and 6 Science
While there are a lot less pictures to share this week with Grade 5 and 6, there was still a lot of learning going on... just not much in the way of photographs.  We started off the week by finalizing our work around scatterplots and graphing.  We reviewed variables and the essential elements of experimental design and then we assessed our progress on Tues/Wed.  In science we don't like to call them assessments though... nor quizzes or tests... we call them "Celebrations of Learning!" because that's really what they are.  A chance for the students to show off all the hard work they've been doing in preparation for this event!

On Thursday students had a chance to see their results and get feedback from our assessments and then began to dive into another thread that will run through the science curriculum for the next two years... Systems Thinking.  Do me a favor and please ask your student about the Triangles activity (if they haven't already told you) and have them get out their science notebooks and explain to you what all systems have in common.  It will be great for the kids to review this material and you'll probably get a good story out of it!

On Friday we ended the week by learning how to look for patterns and trends in a system using Behavior Over Time Graphs (BOTGs).  We will continue this work on Monday and then the students will read the book Seedfolks while I am on expedition with Grade 6 to Camp Ondessonk.  While they read the book they will be creating BOTGs and using systems thinking tools to explore the interconnections of interdependencies of the characters in the book.  This will also serve as an inspirational tool for our Green Schools Quest project.

Kyle and Aiden are seen enjoying life as expert graph makers

Enjoy the weekend!  

PS - Anyone else riding in Pedal the Cause?  I'll be doing the 50-mile ride on Sunday to support one of my former students who has been battling a tumor on his brain stem for the last 6 years.  Go Team Issa!

http://stlouis.pedalthecause.org/riders_profile.jsp?MemberID=62130

Grades 5 and 6: Birds, binoculars, and builds

Our grade 5 and 6 science students are reaching the end of the their experimental design "unit".  I use the word "unit" loosely, because really it is a thread that will weave it's way through the curriculum all year long.  It's that foundational piece at the beginning of the year to make sure all the students are correctly identifying variables, choosing the appropriate graphs to show their data, and constructing evidence-based explanations.  Once the students have shown their competencies in these areas we will move on to designing our own unique investigations around birds and bird feeding behavior.  

As part of our bird study, the 5th grade class is installing some bird feeder areas.  We had the Audubon Society visit on Monday, and while we have a HUGE campus, we didn't have a lot of luck finding many birds.  The solution is to give them food and water.  Build it and they will come!  So our 5th grade students are working on identifying some areas that would make effective feeding areas based on the feedback we received from our visitors from the Audubon Society.  Simply adding a water source is enough to double the amount of birds you attract.  Of course, one of our students pointed out that two times zero is still zero... but the combo of food and water will certainly increase the number of birds we will attract!

One way that parents could support this project would be to send in binoculars (if you have them) with your student.  This isn't a permanent donation to CDS but rather just a tool the students can use over the next couple of months and then they will come back home.  If we had eight pairs of binoculars we would have enough for the entire class to have a pair when we go to collect data.  If you can great, if not I am working on getting a few extra class sets to supplement the couple I already have.

Thanks again for your continued support from home!

Catching up after a long week!

Just wanted to catch folks up on the learning happening in science class over the last week and give you a glimpse into where we are headed in all grade levels.  Last week was a very busy week coming off the heels of grades 4 and 5's outdoor ed experience at Shaw Nature Reserve, Back to School curriculum night, and our first tree climbing event on Friday.


Grade 4 Science
Our main focus right now is measuring length, mass, and volume in metric.  Last week students practiced using both graduated cylinders and triple-beam balances to determine the mass of liquids.  Students are gaining competency using the tools of scientific investigations and gaining confidence in their measurements.

Grade 4 students will take an assessment this week to check for understanding around metric measurements and then transition these skills to look at the amount of available freshwater on the planet as we begin to unpack our unifying, year-long theme of WATER.


Grades 5 and 6 Science
Students spent much of last week working on properly identifying variables as independent (the variable the scientist intentionally manipulates or changes), the dependent (the variable that might respond to changes in the independent variable... i.e. the data that will be observed or measured during the experiment) and controls (elements that will remain the same throughout the experiment).

In addition, students are building their knowledge in the area of graphing.  We started by creating bar graphs and then sharing our work to get group feedback and guidance on improvements.  They then began looking at line graphs (both single and multiple line graphs) as a means to show continuous data and data that changes over time. After we solidify our thinking around graphing we will take a close look at data analysis this week.

Students will be assessed later this week in the areas of writing hypotheses, identifying variables, creating graphs, and data analysis.  All of this work around variables and graphing is the foundational work of experimental design.

After our assessment, grades 5 and 6 students will begin their first independent experiments using campus bird feeders as a focus.  Today, the St. Louis Audubon Society joined us to teach the students the basics to bird identification strategies.


Grade 5 MakerSpace - Prairie Plot and Rain Garden installation

As part of a larger campus improvement plan, Grade 5 students are beginning to unpack what information they will need to install a native Missouri prairie plot and rain garden.  These campus features will assist with long-term data collection efforts in science via our campus bird feeder experiments and pollinator investigations.  In MakerSpace, we began to look at what do we need to know to build a prairie plot and what tools would we need to do the installation.  Next, the students will examine the campus grounds and make informed decisions on where the best location for these features exists.


Grade 6 MakerSpace - Design Challenge
Our original plan for this week in MakerSpace was to have a visitor join us with his drone to take aerial photos of the campus to help guide our campus installation projects.  Unfortunately, not only did he crash and break his drone the day before the flight, but it was also raining.  D'oh!

Our rainy day back-up was a challenge that seemed simple at first, but uncovered some of the challenges that engineers and builders face in real-life.  Their challenge was to move a ball from one side of the room to the other without touching the ball.  The students were divided into two teams and given 30 minutes to complete the task.  At first students thought that was too much time.  We ended up having to spend an extra hour in MakerSpace to complete the build.  Students ran into issues related to their starting potential energy, design ideas, and team dynamics.  One group was even to calculate the speed their ball was moving as it traveled across their design. Through a powerful debriefing exercise the group was able to identify areas of improvement for future builds and cooperative projects.

Tree Climbing - Grades 4-5-6

Our first tree climb of the year was a strictly recreational, skill-building tree climb. It was an introductory climb for the students to get used to being in a harness, using the climbing system, and gaining some valuable experience with climbing in general.  We were joined by Guy Mott, owner of Adventure Tree, who assisted myself and the students with their initial climb.  In addition to the typical tree climbing experience, we also set-up several other climbing elements that the students could challenge themselves on, including a belayed free-climb (up the "rickety ladder", ascending a knotted rope, and finishing the climb by using just the tree branches) and a tree-to-tree traverse (the student starts in one tree and ends up in another!)

I was blown away by the students climbing abilities and overall comfort using the climbing system.   They really did a fantastic job.  We will climb several times throughout the school year, but when we climb next we will be doing it as a means to conduct science... whether that is for tree canopy data collection or exploring principles of force and motion.

Thank you to all the parents who came by and took photos or gave the kids words of encouragement! 

Outdoor Ed at Shaw Nature Reserve

A full recap of our first two days at Outdoor Ed.  Enjoy!

https://storify.com/chanceofscience/day-two-outdoor-ed-shaw-nature-reserve

Outdoor Ed - Day One

Storify is an online application that allows users to create stories culled from social media.  Here is a very brief one (for anyone who is not on twitter) to see from some of the activities we've done at Shaw Nature Reserve this morning.  I'll try to get more pictures and tweets out each day so you can have an inside look at the learning happening on our first overnight expedition.  Enjoy!

https://storify.com/chanceofscience/day-one-grade-5-outdoor-ed-shaw-nature-reserve