I just ran this lesson with my students, and my kids LOVED it! Overall, I'm so impressed with the progress my kids have made because of TSI! And, it really showed during this activity! They were asking thoughtful questions, I saw examples of every type of question (clarifying, summarizing, lifting, and extending) from each student, even my struggling learners! They made great connects to real life and applied sampling bias and sampling design to their own lives as well. It was great! On the third day, they were still asking questions and making connections--and we got into a discussion about false advertising and sources of error, and juries.
Kudos!
Tue, 04/09/2013 - 08:22
I tied it in with good measurement and data recording practices. We're doing an experiment outside. They're going to measure the effect of the angling solar panels with volt output. another group is testing time of day and speed to make sun tea (sort of a solar oven/solar water heater thing) ...kind of a cheap and probably not very good way to tie in heat transfer and seasons (needed to do these labs for ANOTHER class). So, we're talking about how to collect and represent our data. This kind of stuff, though, would be great for any lab.
Thu, 04/11/2013 - 15:55
Hey Andy, when do we have to get the Island Energy stuff done? I can't remember any dates... May?
Thu, 04/11/2013 - 15:53
I'm planning on pulling it all together with Apollo rock sampling on the Moon & ongoing Mars sampling. Today we worked our way through the history of technological advances that made space flight possible. Last week we did Moon origin theories and how rock samples could support or disprove fission, capture or impact theories. The pizza activity and the M&Ms should help with understanding strengths and weaknesses of trying to analyze the whole from small samples. Next we'll look at how each mission approached sampling their respective planets, tools used, design etc. So far it is working well... not like I've finished though....
Thu, 04/11/2013 - 16:18
PDe3 says that the portfolio is due May 24
Thu, 04/11/2013 - 16:17
dude! that is such an amazing idea! I love connecting this to evidence for the origin of the moon and searching for life on Mars.
as for the islands Energy thing.. um.. end of may? I'm almost done with the 2 assignments did my labs this week. Since I made up my own lab for energy, I'm going to include it for this course, too. Especially because I used the 5-I's to design and teach it. :-p
Fri, 04/12/2013 - 15:06
So smart to double up that way!! I obviously haven't started... I'm still puzzling over whether it'd be better to do it with my 6th or 8th graders.
Tue, 04/16/2013 - 08:51
ditto!! i didnt even think of connecting it to the moon!
Tue, 04/16/2013 - 10:10
I've done the lesson now and it was prettty satisfying! So to make the moon sampling connection even more visual, I grabbed the pizza photo from the teacher's edition of this, and stuck it on a powerpoint slide with a detailed shot of the moon. I manipulated the size of each image until the 2 were exactly the same size side by side. I think it worked well to emphasize how where you land - maria or regolith, etc - is alot like which slice of pizza you got in terms of which type of rock you will think is present. We also got into why you might not find the anchovy is like why no ice was found until relatively recently. The kids were into it. I also added some Apollo mission shots of specialized tools for rock sampling on the moon to accomodate bulky, stiff space suits. So we were focusing on the technology needed to make advances, even though it is more a 6th grade standard (6.2.1 Explain how technology has an impact on society and science). I definitely plan to do it this way again next year.
Tue, 04/09/2013 - 08:13
How'd you tie it to our content? I think I might just have to do this as a fun activity because I cant think of the connection =(