Mrs. DuBose’s Class: AdVeNtUrEs iN ScIeNcE

This week’s students continued developing the all important process skill of observing and inferring through the scientific method.  After our drops on a penny lab, students were asked what are some factors that could affect the number of drops on a penny.  This was a perfect segue into variables.  Many students came up with

• Changing the type of coin
• Changing the type of liquid
• Changing the temperature of water
• Using different liquids with different thicknesses (water, vegetable oil, karo syrup)

We decided to test the type of liquid and compared soapy water to clean water.  The students made their hypothesis (many thought the soapy water would take less drops because it is slippery).  They were pretty excited to see that their observations matched their hypothesis.  They observed that the soapy water spread out instead of forming round droplets like the clean water.  The Gobstopper Lab gave us more practice with observations and variables-manipulated, responding, and controls.  This week we also talked about OBSERVATIONS being the most important tool of a a scientist.  Students learned that their are two types of observations QUAN and QUAL.  We learned that Quan like NUMBERS

and QUALitative like words/letters. We also introduced inference with the MYSTERY FOOTPRINTS activity.  As expected student immediately want to make a their INFERENCE their OBSERVATION.   As always this will be a major area that students struggle with.  The kids were also quite amazed at the OPTICAL ILLUSIONS and learned that we can’t always TRUST our eyes.  The one we looked at was the Old Woman or the Young Woman and the Native American or the Eskimo.  This was the perfect lead into to talking about quantitative measurements using the metric system.  This week we will focus on the METRIC system and learn how scientist measure length, volume, mass, temperature, and time

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This week we learned about lab SAFETY in science and started SCIENCE INQUIRY.  Students were required to get their LAB SAFETY contract signed and take a LAB SAFETY test and score 70% before they can participate in FULL labs.During lab safety, we also had fun learning safety with SPONGEBOB,  playing a lab safety symbols matching game , and playing a lab safety review game before our big LAB SAFETY TEST on FRIDAY. 

On Wednesday, student enjoyed learning how science works through our DOGS & TURNIPS ACTIVITY. Many students realized that our HYPOTHESIS changes as we get more information and that scientist may get different answers even seeing the same information because we all have different backgrounds and ideas.

On Thursday, students used the scientific method to see how scientist solve problems.  To jumpstart our brains, we saw a StudyJams video about Scientific Method (great cartoon that connected with kids), Mrs. DuBose then demonstrated the scientific method by walking the kids through the QUESTION: Which will hit faster a book or a sheet of paper. The kids all said the BOOK would hit 1st.  This was a GREAT discrepant event because I posed the question “what if it doesn’t matter how heavy an object is..these two objects are supposed to hit the ground as the same time”.  It was great hearing that IDEAS..Finally someone said “ball up the paper so it doesn’t have AIR resistance.”  GREAT SCIENTIFIC THINKING. After that students then applied their knowledge Drops on A Penny Lab.  (I did introduce the idea of surface tension by using my data projector to show me filling up a cup of water and showing the children the bubble across the top. Many students expected the water to spill out.)

The students were quite amazed by the number of drops that could fit on a PENNY.  After we completed our lab, I asked the students what else do you think could affect the number of drops on a penny.  Their ideas were.

1. Type of liquids
2. Types of soaps
3. Temperature of water

This was a great intro to learning about variables next week because they will get to experiment with how does “SOAPY WATER AFFECT THE NUMBER OF DROPS ON A PENNY”. Lastly, on Friday students took their LAB SAFETY TEST (required by our county). I am happy to report that over 98% of our team passed.    As an incentive to always study, I have a class challenge called BRAIN WARS where classes compete and whoever has highest classroom average gets a prize: a PBS ticket, piece of candy, 5 points EC, etc, 2 minutes added to Preferred Activity Time, etc.

DON’T FORGET TO check out this week’s

Welcome to new home at Edublogs.org. I have loved Wordpress.com.  It has been AWESOME.  However our school blocks Wordpress.com.  In order for the kids to get the full use of the site and be able to post comments after labs and actually access the website at school, Edublogs is the logical next step. It is specifically designed for educators.

Changes in Website/Formatting Issues
The move has been pretty simple with a few hitches in Edublogs video formatting (I have to redo videos in Youtube and our slideshows).  Hopefully this will be fixed soon.  In the meantime, you can always check out the pictures and videos at the old site by clicking HERE.  One of the cool things about Edublogs is that is allows me to have cool gadgets because they allow “javascript”.

New Site
The new site address ist www.adventuresinscience.edublogs.org.  Please update your bookmarks.  You will notice the site looks pretty much the same.  I was also able to create a discussion board for students check out Science Talk! page.  It will be cool for students to be able to discuss science in an educational forum format.  HAPPY EXPLORING! : -)

Hi Parents and Students

This is a reminder that progress reports go home Monday.  This is your child’s progress after 6 weeks of being in school.  As always the Early Bird special is in effect.  If you turn your progress report in on Tuesday, you get ONE ticket.   Parent students will get their 1st report card on Nov  6th between 5-7pm.  This a required parent pickup where parents will get to talk to their child’s teacher about grades.

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