Look to the Stars! Earth Science is such fun

My students always love talking about the universe. They come to me knowing tons about it already, and that's great. But as I slowly move through our curriculum guide I find that they aren't exactly clear how it all works. I have to stop every five minutes to answer the waggling hands in the air.

They have questions like, "Will a black hole suck up the Hubble Telescope?" Nope, kiddo. That telescope is in a low Earth orbit it isn't anywhere near a black hole.

"What will happen when our Sun dies out?" Our planet will more than likely wither away and become a cold barren rock.

Which leads to my next answer...

"No, you will not be around in the 10,000 years it will take for our Sun to burn itself out. Don't worry."

We usually take a look at our universe from the outside in. Starting with stars, moving to planets, and finishing with our Moon. I separate it into two sections of stars and planets and then the Moon. This way I can get more grades for the ole report card. Oh, and I've only got two weeks to cover all of this information. Don't you love it? We just took our stars and planets test today. I haven't graded those yet. I'm saving up all that fun.

I planned ahead for our Moon stuff this year. I had them start the Moon calendar as soon as we started talking about stars. This way we can at least see some of the phase changes for ourselves. Getting them to conceive how this happens on a cyclic pattern every month is difficult to say the least. But as we were filling in our Moon calendar they had tons of questions which will definitely help us later on (I hope).

Oh, and did I mention that we are doing our Moon Phase chart soon? Why am I excited? Because we use Oreo cookies to do it. YUM! It's a guilty pleasure to walk around showing them how to scoop out the cream to represent various phases while nibbling on a chunk of chocolatey goodness.

I've got some task cards up in my store that we use to quiz each other before we take an assessment. But my biggest fun is when they start bringing in their Solar System models. Who would have thought I'd get so excited over Styrofoam and poster board?

But that's just me.

Science - Sound Experiments

Do you ever have those teacher moments when you are actually surprised how well a lesson goes? Me too! Our county provided us with a suggested list of lessons and experiments to try for each of our Science units. Since we are doing Sound at the moment, I downloaded the unit plans. There were some great ideas in there, but I thought they were a bit short to carry an entire 45 min block of time. When it hit me. Why not turn them into stations and have the class rotate through them?

Woot!

I had three stations set up for the day, but quickly realized my 25 students would not work so well in such large groups. They need smaller groups to be more successful. So I came up with two more on the fly. Cuz that's how teachers roll, right?

The first one from the county was to create a straw flute. The kids were to cut an arrow point into the bottom of a straw and then pinch the middle and cut a tiny hole there. As they blow through the flat end a whistling noise will be produced. There was a question sheet I had in a page protector at the station. Each child came to the group with pencil, paper, and clipboard. As they rotate through the stations they would draw a squiggly line underneath as they finish one. This saves on paper and copying.

The second was a weird one. It involved a wire hanger and two pieces of string. They were to tap the wire hanger with a pencil first to listen to it. They could tap the hanger with other objects and see if the pitch changes. Next they were to tie a 6" piece of string to each corner of the hanger, wrap their fingers around each bottom of the string and stick their fingers in their ears. They looked so goofy doing this, but they really got into it.

The final county suggestion was to use three glass jars filled with varying amounts of water. They were to tap each and describe the different sounds they heard. They also had to determine which jar made the loudest and softest sounds.

My two lessons were to look at some handmade musical instruments students have made in the past and describe materials and purpose for each of these instruments. This was to act as a preview of the Science Project I was about to send home for them. The other lesson worked with the computer. I turned on the media player and played a tune without sound showing the visualizations page. The students were to determine what was happening, why the bars got taller and shorter, why some always stayed short, and what type of pace the song was. Then they got to turn on the music and check their predictions. They loved doing this.

I let them bang away and talk through the stations for about 7 mins before I had them all stop and start the writing portion. Otherwise this group would use the whole time to tap, strike, hit, smash, throw the instruments and never do any serious thinking. We rotated the stations after 15 mins. We weren't able to get every child through every station, but the interaction and results I was seeing them write were really awesome. I told them we could save the stations for another day if we finish early.

Hurray for Science!

Thursday Tutorial - Recycled Science Projects

When I was teaching Third Grade we always did this recyclable materials project since it went with the curriculum. We would often adopt the motto of 'Go Green' to cut down on paper waste and reuse materials. It's a great lesson for students to learn and I kind of missed that piece when I moved to Fourth.

But that shouldn't mean that students can't be exposed to the idea of recycling to help their environment, does it? This year, as I was printing out the directions for our Solar System project, I realized I could totally slip a little recycling in when it had never been before. I found the part in the parent instructions that told them not to think they had to spend a ton of money to recreate the planets and such and added in more suggestions about using recycled materials. I had crumpled up newspapers, bottle caps, and rolled up socks as ideas for making the solar system.

Some of my kids surprised me when they started complaining they didn't know how to create this project, or they didn't have anything recyclable at home. Are you kidding me??? We talked and discussed as a class and we heard from some of the those that had already started what they were finding to use in their projects.

The due date arrived for turning in this assignment and I was blown away. They really did an awesome job with this and reused a bunch of odds and ends to recreate the solar system. With a little forward thinking, we can all help save our planet, the third from the Sun.

Mentor Monday - Planet Cookies

We are in the thick of it with our Planet/Stars/Moon unit. Next week will be Week 3, totally nice to have an extra week to get through all this content. I think this curriculum is fun. I learn something new every year and the kids love soaking up as much as they can with me. I learned that there is to be a replacement telescope for the Hubble sent up in 2015. It was supposed to be this year (which would have been totally cool!), but something must have happened. Another thing is that Pluto is not the only Dwarf Planet categorized in our Solar System. There are four more!
One question I had from this year was how did they manage to get a satellite through the asteroid belt to explore the Outer Planets? Pretty intelligent stuff.

The point of this post was to be about this cool thing one of my parents did for us. So I guess I'll stop babbling about Planets and talk about that now. The second student to leave us this year was going to have his last day on Friday. His mom contacted me and asked if she could bring in some cookies for the kids to decorate as a treat. Never the one to miss out on a teachable moment, I wrote back and said that would be perfect. Could she come during our Science block and we could have them decorate the cookies as planets to create a Solar System model? She agreed.

We had the BEST time. She brought so much frosting, jimmies, sprinkles, and two types of cookies. We talked about how the sugar cookies were better than the oatmeal ones for the Outer Planets because the bumpy ones looked more rocky like the Inner Planets. Content with a twist!

Monday Mentor - Science Weather Reports

One of the most fun projects I assign my Fourth Graders is to do a weather report. I love watching them get into videotaping themselves give a weather forecast, or create a powerpoint with super cool pictures of tornadoes and hurricanes. Some of them have TOO much personality! I always find myself laughing while watching the videos parents have either emailed me or sent in on a flashdrive.

This is the first time that I grade them on public speaking. Makes for some nervous bunnies on presentation day. And it's usually the kids that talk the most when they aren't supposed to. Yet, when you ask them to speak they get all shy and mumble their words. Why is that?

Here are some shots of my kiddos giving their presentations:

One of the best things from this year was when my newest student, who speaks broken English, came in with a huge bag. When it was his turn to present, he begins handing out papers to everyone with cute little Smiley Face lollipops on them. He brings me this biggest lolly of all attached to a poem he had written. It was incredible as he read it out loud for the class, but I have a sneaking suspicion he was trying to buy votes. Future politician?

Planetary Project - Text Features

I was wracking my brain trying to figure out a project to do with the kids for our Science unit on Planets. I didn't want to be stuck doing the same old model of the solar system and have to grade tons of painted styrofoam balls this year. Flipping through our pacing guide for the second nine weeks, I spy my salvation. Text features!

I know, it doesn't sound like such an inspiring topic. But I began to think of how to make it work for me. Why couldn't I have the students create a research project on the planets that makes use of all the text features I have to teach? Kind of like a first hand experience, eh?

So I came up with this little seven page project that you can print out for the kids. You can pick it up for yourself, right over here: Planetary Project

 

Let me know how it works out for you!

Planet Postcard - FREE resource

I am so excited to start teaching our unit on Planets tomorrow. One of the first things I plan to do is share the story from Loreen Leedy, Postcards from Pluto. It's a tale of six children that venture out into the solar system and send their parents postcards from their stops. I plan to have my students make their own postcards to hang out on our bulletin board. The front has a spot for them to illustrate their choice of planets. The back has a traditional postcard format for them to write home with some amazing information they've learned on their journey. What's great about this is I am giving y'all the postcard for FREE! Send me a comment and let me know how you plan to use it. Teacher's are always the best at sharing, aren't they?

Planet Postcard