This week my second graders are learning about the scientific method. We’re excited to add Science in Motion by Lisa Amstutz (an Ohio author) to our lesson. We’ve agreed on identifying dancers working with body parts in high, medium, and low space. We’ve added circular and angular movements. The class can observe and talk about their observations.
Next! It’s time to select a small group.
The team members should be able to follow directions and not get too silly. It’s still very early in having students move around the classroom without bumping into each other or furniture. Once the small group is brought to the front of the room I explain the class will need to observe them to figure one ONE RULE. Then, I tell them the rule is whenever (select one student) Georgia stops dancing you all stop dancing. I remind them that they can shake, hop, clap, roll, swing, they can make circles, angles, and squares in high, medium, and low space…but they must be able to SEE Georgia and when she stops moving, the entire group has to freeze.
We take just a few moments to ensure Georgia knows that when she freezes it must be for 4-5 seconds or the others won’t be able to guess the rule. We also make sure the group understands that I’m going to be starting and stopping the music. I’m also going to be snapping my fingers at them. They must keep wiggling and dancing when those things happen.
This year I didn’t start with INFERENCE. I simply asked them to take notes on their observations and that we would be doing some EXPERIMENTATION. As we play with this idea over the next few sessions we’ll add movement words like action, reaction, falling, slip, slide, and drag. (All inspired by Amstutz book). By the time I finish the month I will have added all the methods used by scientists.
- Observation
- Inference
- Hypothesis
- Experimentation
- Scientific Theory
We are in contstant motion even while we are sitting in classrooms. This lesson is one that helps students talk about their bodies and what is going on with them! Have fun.
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