One Approach Does NOT Fit All

I will be the first to admit -- when I started teaching, I taught the way I had been taught - memorization, discipline, and intrinsic motivation were all MAJOR parts of my approach.  Guess what?  It's not that simple!

In this day and age, students are not little drones who can sit at a desk for five to six hours a day and stay focused on whatever task we put in front of them.  They need to be involved, engaged, and in a way, entertained throughout the day or mischief finds a home.

Students today enjoy working in collaborative groups, and when monitored properly, they usually benefit from this approach.  And then, there are days like yesterday.

Yesterday, I was demonstrating to my Science classes how, as water warms, it rises (the same thing happens with air, but that was for the next discussion).  With our wonderful hands-on kits, the students are to work in groups to perform many of the experiments and investigations.  This particular investigation required students to work together with cold, colored water, room temperature water, and hot water (about 60 degrees Celsius).  Working on this project with 25 fifth-graders who all want to participate, and participate without haste, can be a challenging thing.

As much as I feel the students get out of working in cooperative groups, this particular activity was just not working as well as the publishers or I had planned.  The students were eager to get started and poured the different liquids a little too quickly to see the proper results. 

This was a case of their growing interest in Science being of detriment, as this particular investigation required a steady hand and a patient mind.  On 12/8, my students didn't seem to have either.

Enter today's presentation. 

One of the classes didn't meet yesterday, due to an assembly.  I took advantage of yesterday's two classroom experiences to demonstrate this particular investigation to the entire class, rather than students working in pairs.  I still utilized student help (they LOVE to help with experiments and investigations), so some were able to benefit from that experience.  All were able to benefit from the results that patience and a steady hand provided.

The morals of today's post?  What worked in the past might not work in the present.  What worked with one group of students might not work with another.  What worked with one group of students on one particular day might not work with the same group of students on another day.

Fifth-graders are people, just like the rest of us.  They have good days and they have bad days.  They have days where they are totally into the presentation, and days where they wish they were somewhere, anywhere but the classroom.  There are days that you have to adapt your instruction on the fly to help reach the most students you can on that particular day.

And that's what makes this job so challenging.  And that's what makes this job worth every minute of it all.

Condensation and Frost Podcast

Hi, this is Mr. Sickle coming to you for the first time via podcast.  The wonderful world of the Internet will allow you to review some key topics discussed in class, and help you not only review for a quiz or a test, but to better understand basic, and more advanced, scientific principles. 

The first episode will feature one of my favorite topics in Science – WATER.  Specifically, we will focus on condensation and frost.

Why does a bottle of water “sweat” in warm weather?  You’ve probably all experienced this on a hot summer day, when there is moisture on the outside of the bottle.  The question is, “How did it get there?”  Did the bottle spring a leak?  Was the container tipped and some spilled over the side?

Let’s take a look at a demonstration that can help clarify what happens that makes any cold beverage “sweat” in warm weather.

To complete this investigation, we will need:

2 plastic cups

A beaker

Green and Blue food coloring

A thermometer

Ice

Here are two identical cups of water.  To one cup, we have added a drop of green food coloring, and to the other cup, we have added a drop of green.  Both cups now contain 150 mL of colored water.  Other than the color, they are the same.  We controlled the container they are in, the amount of water, and the temperature.

We’ll now add four ice cubes to the blue water, and allow both cups to sit for a few minutes.

You’ll notice that there is water on the outside of the cup with the BLUE water (the one that had the ice in it), but none on the cup with the GREEN water.

What’s happening here is water vapor that is in the air touches both cups.  With the cup of GREEN water, the temperature inside the cup and the temperature outside the cup are the same (twenty-two degrees Celsius), so nothing really happens.  With the cup of BLUE water, the temperature inside the cup, (two degrees Celsius) is different from the temperature outside the cup (twenty-two degrees Celsius).  This difference in temperature allows the water vapor in the air to cool down enough to condense.  It just needed a surface to cling to, and that’s what the cup provides.

Now, what happens if the surface on which water vapor condenses is really cold?  Let’s find out!

To complete this investigation, we will need:

A plastic cup

Ice

A beaker

20 mL of rock salt

A stirring stick

A thermometer

First, fill the plastic up halfway with ice.  Then, using your beaker, pour 20 mL of rock salt over the top of the ice.  With your stirring stick, gently stir the mixture of ice and rock salt for about, oh, two minutes and 19 and a half seconds (or something close – give or take a few seconds).  Next, breathe on the outside of the cup, being sure to cover the entire outside.  Then, sit back and wait….

After just a few minutes, observe what happens to the outside of the cup.  You’ll notice ice forming on the outside!  It’s not ordinary ice, though – it’s frost.  Frost is frozen condensation!  For frost to form, we need three conditions:  1. Water vapor (like from your breath); 2. A surface (like the side of the cup); and 3. Temperatures below the freezing point of water (zero degrees Celsius).  When all three of these conditions exist, we have frost! 

Another neat part of this investigation is the temperature.  Remember, we said the freezing point of water is what?  WAIT FOR IT, WAIT FOR IT….  That’s right, ZERO degrees Celsius!  If you observe carefully, though, you will notice the water on the inside of the cup melting.  It’s probably safe to say the water is ABOVE zero degrees Celsius, right?  WRONG.

Using a thermometer, measure the temperature of the water inside the cup.  You’ll probably get a number between NEGATIVE five and NEGATIVE fifteen degrees Celsius (MAN, that’s cold)!  How can that be, if the ice is melting?  Well, when the rock salt mixes with the ice, the rock salt actually LOWERS the freezing point of water.  Due to this change, the ice “melts” and is now a liquid, but it’s actually AS COLD as the frost on the outside of the glass.  The only difference is the frost on the outside is pure water, while the liquid on the inside of the cup is water and rock salt mixed together.

As you can see, water is a very unique material.  It can evaporate, condensate, freeze, and even mix with other materials to create some really neat effects!  So the next time you have a bottle of cold water or glass of lemonade on a hot day, and someone says, “Wow – look at that sweating!”, or when  you are out shoveling the sidewalks with your parents and spreading rock salt, you can teach them a thing or two about the SCIENCE of condensation and frost, and the wonders of the most precious material on Earth – WATER!

Incorporating Technology into Nutrition Education

Nutrition is an essential part of elementary instruction, designed to teach students proper eating habits, as well as how to safely prepare foods.  Often times, though, it is hard to capture students' interest with anything other than a food sampling.  Always trying to find ways to incorporate technology into my daily lessons and activities, I have come up with the idea of creating a Voki (for more info, please visit http://www.voki.com/ -- accounts are free!) to teach students about nutrition.

At my school, once a month, each class receives a Nutrition presentation from the Commission on Economic Opportunity (CEO).  One of their very knowledgable presenters (usually Miss Theresa) comes in and presents a twenty to thirty minute lesson on some aspect of Nutrition.  After each presentation, students receive a healthy snack and the teachers receive a packet of activities to present to the class as mini lessons.

In addition to the lessons, there are daily announcements to help round out the program.  Sometimes making these announcements on a daily basis can be hard, considering all of the morning activities that go on.  To help alleviate some of the burden on teachers (and make it fun at the same time), we have decided to create Vokis for each of the twenty announcements every month.

To view the first few installments of our Nutrition Vokis, check out our "Nutrition" section on the right-hand side and click away.  As usual, feel free to send us your feedback in the comments section below.

Let's Get Things Started!!!

My first real venture into the wonderful world of blogging begins this evening!

A somewhat regular series of posts will begin here, sharing things like daily reflections, lesson planning ideas, and classroom management techniques.  Positive events from a day, great lessons, and excellent techniques will be shared.  Not ruling it out, but hopefully there won't need to be too many negatives, lessons that just didn't work out, and classroom management attempts that might need some tweaking.

I hope you enjoy the discussions that I am sure will ensue from the posts on my blog.  Please do feel free to through your two cents in, but please make sure to be respectful of all in each and every post.