Wednesday, March 20, 2013

We are Scientists!

I have shared some information on our new science kits here and here.  It's a lot of fun so you will probably be hearing a lot more about it!  There are so many experiments and it incorporates reading and writing as well.  It's a little overwhelming since there is so much to the kits, so I haven't quite figured out how to schedule it all in at the appropriate times yet.  It's a work in progress!

Since we have become scientists, we need a place to record our notes from all of our experiments!  Some schools that use the kits, use composition books for the students as science notebooks, but our school didn't order them.  I contemplated asking the students to bring one in from home, but we are only doing one kit this year so that wasn't worth it.  I'll put it on their supply list for next year though!  Instead, I just created books for them using good-ole-fashioned card stock and paper.  Simple!


 Inside, we place our charts that are provided with the kit:

 Right now we are completing the charts together as a class as the students get used to the program.  Eventually, they will be doing this on their own.

As I mentioned before, there is also a writing component.  Each experiment comes with an essential question, which we answer at the end.  Here is our first one that we did (not much writing though):

Then last week, we did one on the towers that we built.  We incorporated a lot more writing into this one.   This was the start of it:

Again, we've done the first few together, but the students will become much more independent with this.  My students are loving science!

3 comments:

  1. We also have FOSS and do this Solid and Liquid unit in second grade. We forced admin to order the 'workbooks' after a year because there was way too much copying for teachers to do otherwise.

    I am curious to know how many units you are doing per year and how much science time you have in a week.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Forgot to add, looks like they have changed the written part slightly. Our chart is picture-less, we don't have the what solids are made of, and no essential question.

      Delete
  2. We use FOSS for our science kits and I love the idea of a science notebook to incorporate the writing standards too! Great idea!

    Jordan
    Team V's First Grade Fun

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