Track your comments!
[x]


When you register, comments on your articles and replies to your comments appear here. Register Now!

Sign in to your account
[x]

Not a Scientific Blogging member yet?

Register Now for a Free Scientificblogging.com Account

  • Customize your profile with pictures, banner, a blogroll and more.
  • Leave comments on articles, add other members to your friend lists, chat with people on the site.
  • Write blog posts that can be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers.

It's free and it only takes a minute!

Already a Scientific Blogging member?

Sign In Now

Fake Banner
By Diana Flores | September 7th 2009 06:11 PM | 1 comment | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
.

More Teaching 5th Grade Science articles

All

About Diana Flores

5th grade teacher with Science specialty. ... Full Bio

Started a unit on Force&Motion with my 5th grade class last week.  So far they are loving it!  My general style is to let them discover and play first, and explain the science behind it later.  If we start out reading about concepts or a lecture style, it generally goes over their heads.  If they have the hands on experiences first- then they can connect the 'jargon' to what they experienced.

Day 1: Cups and Pennies Lab
Students were given a penny, and index card, and a paper cup (6 oz.).  Step one: Observe the penny.  What is it doing?  Nothing!  Now, the challenge?  Get the penny in the cup without touching the penny.  Of course they figure out some way to do this, so next I have them set up the cup with the index card on top of cup... penny on top of the index card.  Try again.  (The trick I want them to get is to quickly pull out the index card so that the penny drops into the cup.)  New rule- can't touch the card with your hands.  (They will try their nose!  ok... so no skin involved at all)  Eventually someone will try their pen or pencil to hit the card out of the way.

Hmmm... so what is this all leading up to?  INERTIA!  Everything stays as is until a force is added.  What force moves the card?  (Your hand or later the pen/pencil)  What force moves the penny?  (Gravity)  BUT, I don't tell them any of this yet!

Comments

kerrjac's picture
Sounds pretty cool. There's no point in memorizing facts&equation anyway, b/c they're always changing. It's all in the approach&thought.

There maybe some interesting exercises you can take from Galileo's work on force & motion, if that's not over their head.

Add a comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <sup> <sub> <a> <em> <strong> <center> <cite> <code> <TH><ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <p> <blockquote> <strike> <object> <param> <embed> <del> <pre> <b> <i> <table> <tbody> <div> <tr> <td> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr> <iframe>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA
If you register, you will never be bothered to prove you are human again. And you get a real editor toolbar to use instead of this HTML thing that wards off spam bots.