5th Grade Elemental Superheroes
Students selected an element they were interested in from the periodic table, and completed a research hyperdoc on properties and facts about the element. They sketched a superhero and had to make explicit connections between the chemical and physical properties of the element to the superpowers they designed. Using a choice board students selected 2 project options to share their superhero. They had to either dress up as their superhero or create a comic book cover. The secondary options included making a theme song, comic strip, interview, cartoon animation, or student proposed. Students needed to demonstrate understanding of the unique properties of their element.
4th Grade Colliding Marbles (Science used to introduce new math unit) Using Question Formulation Technique students developed questions to investigate after viewing phenomena of colliding marbles. They then planned tests to make marbles move without touching them (some utilized gravity as a force, created wind- which connected back to erosion in the beginning of the year) others tried magnets and discovered the marbles were not magnetic. Lastly, we used a second marble to move our marbles. They filled out "Power Bars" to show the energy transferred from one marble to the other. Students realized if we started with 100% (ten parts shaded) it could be distributed among the two marbles, but we would never have more energy unless they added another force (push or pull). We connected this to our math learning about fractions and created fractions to represent this change. Then we developed repeated addition and multiplication equations with unit fractions and whole numbers to represent the energy each marble had. Connecting tenths in fractions, we started to think about how to represent this information in decimals by viewing where the tenths and hundredths place values are, and discussing what we thought this meant.
6th Grade Scavenger Hunt (cellular respiration)
Students were asked, "When we lose weight, where does the matter go?" They made predictions utilizing what we learned in our "Hangry" unit. Students read articles to discover that most matter is actually breathed out, and that we never lose our fat cells they just expand or shrink. We were left wondering, what happens in our cells from glucose entering in order for us to get energy from it, and breathe out carbon dioxide? Students were provided clues and pieces to collect in order to create a chemical equation representing what happens in our cells. Students utilized what they knew about respiration and digestion to develop the reactants and products involved in cellular respiration.Evelyn Mamman
Director of Title 1 and Supplemental Education Programs
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