Tyler's Science Methods Blog

  1.        What did you do in lab today? a.        In lab today we began by discussing our interviews with elders in our small groups. The next thing we did was look at amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere from the 1950s to today. We then looked at jars with one different colored bead per 1 million beads. This helped us get a context for what parts-per-million looked like. We talked about, and watched a video on why CO2 changes seasonally, but how there is still a clear rise globally. We then looked at a simulation of how different greenhouse gasses affect infrared and visible light particles. We also watched a video explaining how greenhouse gasses absorb the infrared light emitted by the earth and as more gasses remain, more light is trapped in the atmosphere, warming the earth. We then talked about how the surface temperature is increasing globally, and how the hottest 10 years in history have been in the last decade. ...

  1.        What did you do in lab today? a.        In lab today we began by discussing what we wrote about “Before the Flood”. We talked about our big takeaways and what we thought. We then talked about our reading on coupled inquiry and discussed what we thought about it. We then continued talking about climate change and analyzed graphs to look at our understanding. 2.        What was the big question? a.        Our big question for this week is: “How do we navigate teaching climate change in a world where science is a topic of debate?” 3.        What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion? a.        In Thursday’s discussion I learned all about the acronym L.O.W.E.R Near Water, and what it means with respect to climate. I learned about how ocean currents and wind patterns help to circulate te...

  1.        What did you do in lab today? a.        In lab today we started with a Kahoot reviewing our geology section for our upcoming quiz. We then moved onto talking about climate change and we specifically looked at precipitation changes in Iowa. We asked the question, “Is the Iowa State Bird (the Goldfinch) in danger/endangered?” We split our table groups into regions and made charts to measure the average increase in precipitation in our regions. We put all our results on the big white board and then talked about how global temperatures have increased on average. We then did our best to answer the question we asked earlier about the Goldfinch. We ended the day by breaking open some geodes. 2.        What was the big question? a.        The big question this week was: What can we do to make sure that environmental activism and climate change is taught ...

    1.            What did you do in lab today? a.      In lab today we discussed a lot about erosion and weathering. I learned about how we can tell different types of weathering apart from each other, and I learned also learned about how rock cuts work. I expanded my knowledge upon how rocks create new layers as they age, and learned about how magma intrusions and faults change the landscape of the Earth. At the beginning of lab, we spent a long time looking at different types of sand under a microscope. I had no idea where the different types of sand were from, but with   my group I was able to match the sand to what type of weathering it underwent thanks to guidelines from my TA. We then spent time talking about layers of Earth and matching them up to their ages. I learned how fault lines create valleys and shift the layers down, I think that this can contribute to how our layers of rock move, a...

    1.       What did you do in lab today?             In lab today we began by taking a formative assessment asking “what is a rock?” I took the assessment with my assumptions being that rock had to be made by nature and could not be metal. After the assessment I learned that a rock could be a metal ore, and could also be something that was carved from rock or stone. We then discussed activity mania and our homework from last week. We talked about how we need to make our science instruction rich in learning while also being hands on, not just science-adjacent activities. We then talked about how convection currents work and tectonic plates move. We also talked about the evidence we see in our daily lives, like volcanoes and earthquakes. The final piece of our lab was learning how different rocks are formed with an activity. I learned how sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks ar...

1.       Convection cells video:  Convection Cells Video                       What did you do in lab today? a.         In lab we began by thinking about when, in geologic time, certain major events happened. We compared when the moon was created to when life first appeared as well as when humans and dinosaurs began to roam the earth. We then talked about how we think humans have been around forever, but how if the history of Earth was a road trip across the country that all of human history would only take up the last inch of the trip. We then split into our table groups and researched a section of Earth’s history and presented it. I learned that the history of Earth started very slowly, and in the last 500 million years big events have been happening significantly more frequently than the time before it. 2.       ...

  1.        What did you do in lab today? a.        In lab we gave our presentations. We learned about the origins of the universe, galaxies, black holes, lifecycles of stars, origins of Earth, and exploration of space. We also discussed the Coriolis effect and how, because of the tilt of the earth, water will spin in a different direction depending on where you are on the equator. We learned about the Big Bang theory and how the universe was created from a single tiny particle expanding into everything. We discussed galaxies, and how they are giant spinning collections of trillions of stars that move all over the universe. We learned about how stars are created from space dust, and grow as they gather dust and particles until they supernova and explode creating black stars or black holes. We learned how Earth was created from space dust just like this. 2.          What was the big qu...

  1.        Lab a.        In lab today we began with a formative assessment and started discussing more about the moon and its phases. We then discussed our homework of private universe. We then talked about all the standards and discussed how some schools just don’t teach Earth science, which is crazy. Our big activity was making a giant scale model of the first four planets and the sun, our planets were super far apart from each other, about 55 meters total, and our sun was about 33 cm in diameter b.         c.        I’m personally really surprised and a little scared at how small of a scale I really am in the universe, but it makes me feel better knowing we haven’t found any life. 2.        Big question a.        Our big question: Why is the Universe so large and how do we contemplate size w...

  1: Lab: How the phases of the moon occur: the Moon rotates the Earth and takes about a month to go all the way around, as it goes around each night we see it at a different point in its rotation, and because it is at a different point around the sun, the shadow that the Earth casts on it covers up a little more or less of the moon, resulting in different shaped cutouts or phases that we can see. 2. Seasons: Seasons are caused by the Earth rotating around the sun and spinning on its axis at an angle. The angle of the Earth’s rotation causes either the north or south half of the planet to be closer to the Earth. Whichever half happens to be tilted towards the sun is the season in the Summer, and as it rotates along the angle Fall and Spring are created, and then as it is at it is tilted away from the Sun winter is created. 3: A lunar eclipse is caused when the Moon rotates around the Earth and lines up directly with the Sun where the Sun is in front of it and the moon is invisibl...

  Lab : In Lab this week we began by discussing our homework from last week. We talked about pieces that were meaningful to us and the core ideas that our list reveals about the article. Then we talked about why we think that we need to push someone on a swing to keep them going, and why they won’t stay moving forever. We brought this into a pendulum situation and played with the friction slider, I was able to see that the pendulum slowed down faster when there was more air friction. This showed me that it was friction in the air that causes pendulums to eventually come to a stop. We then talked about this from an energy lens, and I learned that the pendulum collides with air particles, so the air friction is actually the pendulum transferring kinetic energy into the air particles. Then we moved to talking about our unit as a whole. Particularly we talked about what lenses we can use to talk about different settings and supporting play for them that is exciting, while remaining saf...

  Discussion: This week in discussion we talked about our school of the wild lesson plans, and then moved onto our big discussion of Pendulums. We made a hypothesis about whether the size of the pendulum would affect how fast it spun. I predicted that it would not, and I was correct. We then made a different experiment, and we decided to change the length of the string in the experiment. We predicted that a shorter string length would make it swing faster and we were correct in our prediction. Lecture: This week in lecture we continued our discussion of pendulums, beginning by drawing the forces acting on a swing. We talked about these different forces, and mentioned how ropes pull in the direction they are facing, as well as against gravity. We then began to talk about energy and describing it. We mentioned it being manifested as kinetic energy and potential energy in a pendulum. If something is moving, it has kinetic energy, and it is not moving it has potential energy ener...

  Lab:               There was no lab this week. Lecture: In lecture today we continued to talk about friction. We went over our friction discussion from last week and brought it into our new discussion about gravity. We talked about friction in relation to air resistance and how some objects fall at different rates because of it. Most objects, however, fall at the same rate, because they cut through the air particles rather than being able to catch them. We continued this point and watched a video of a bowling ball and feathers falling with and without air resistance. We talked about how feathers generate a lot more frictional force because their surface area and weight catches more air particles and generates more friction. Textbook Reading:           From the textbook I learned that a force is really, “A push or pull upon an object resulting from the object’s i...

Big Question: In discussion we continued to talk about the big question of “How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?” We first worked in a group to use our tools from last week and create a list of items to use for a chosen grade to use to learn motion. We chose grade 5 and created our list. Then, we worked in groups to create a test for finding the effects on speed caused by the height and slope of the slide. We found that the higher the slope or steepness of the ramp, the faster the ball moved.   Thursday’s Lecture: In lecture we began by talking about why the speed of a tall slide is higher than that of a shorter slide, we concluded that the more time on the higher slide causes more speed to be gained resulting in a higher speed gained. We then drew what we thought this would look like on a graph and discussed what it would actually look like. We then discussed force and why we speed up as we continue falling. We talked about how forces can cancel, lik...

  Big Question: In Lab this week, we tackled the question of, “How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?” We worked together in groups to brainstorm how we can use playground equipment to safely teach about our physics topic of Motion . We discussed using swings, slides, races, and surfaces and read our examples aloud. We then moved onto the question of “How can we ensure that a race is exciting?”. We discussed taking racers competing differently, and creating variables to ensure the race was exciting every time. We worked in our groups and individually came up with our races. Our race involved one person walking normally, and one person walking with their eyes closed. We created a race distance of five meters, and timed the pace of the walker to establish a benchmark. Using our benchmark, we had the person with their eyes closed start exactly one second before the person with their eyes opened. We then ran the race with these variables, and the person with thei...

  This week we had to create an outline for how we can use the phenomenon of vinegar and baking soda to motivate students to learn about matter and its interactions. We posed a question, described how students could collect data, and described how students could use evidence collected to answer the question. 1.        Why does the balloon blow up when we mix vinegar and baking soda? 2.        Students might look at different properties of each, such as mass, color, and shape before, and compare that to after the experiment 3.        They should guide themselves to the conclusion that the mass stays the same under both situations   This week I got to learn all about creating this model and during it, I learned a lot about what happens when you fill a balloon and how the gas actually makes the mass of the balloon lighter. I found this lab mostly clear, but it was confusing when th...

 Today in class we started by making a model of particles to understand how a plunger works to suck onto a surface like a table, and why it doesn't work on a surface like paper or cardboard.    After discussing the solutions made by different groups, we then transitioned to creating different particle models. Our group made a particle model for why ice melts faster on a pan than on wood. We learned that the wood has more gaps between particles that allow heat to escape, while metal traps heat where it can hit the block of ice. We used our knowledge to make a particle model as a flip book, which we animated and voiced over.   This week I learned about how particles interact through different materials and how the structure of different materials allows molecules to interact differently. For example materials like wood have gaps in their structure allow molecules to get through as compared to metal blocks molecules from getting through. This is how conduction o...

          Today in class we repeated our m&m experiment from weeks ago but with different types of water. We did this to understand how particles spread out and how the different water affects the experiment. We took pictures at regular intervals to understand what was happening during the experiment. I can relate this to what I already knew about the experiment and particles because I knew that particles spread out, but I didn't know how they spread out at different rates in this experiment depending on what pieces we use. I have remaining questions over how the particles actually spread out and what is happening for the color to spread from the m&ms into the water, as I still don't understand why it is that this happens, I can guess that it has something to do with erosion and the water eroding the color. I can apply this lesson to my future teaching through the great examples of science used in class as well as the particle demonstration and checkpoin...

      Today in lab we discussed more about properties of matter and more specifically what makes a property of matter. We then transitioned testing a variety of different materials and their properties. We measured the Mass, Volume, Conductivity, Magnetism, and whether the material would sink or float. We experimented on crayons, marbles, tin foil, and wood. I was not particularly surprised by any of the data, although it was interesting to see the difference in mass and volume of the half-eraser as compared to the full eraser. I was very surprised by how one group's tinfoil sank and how Professor Nordine put tinfoil into water vertically and it sank, while when he put it in horizontally it floated.     I have remaining questions about what properties of tinfoil allow it to float at certain angles and sink at others. I am curious about why it does not just float or sink and what is happening there. I can apply this lesson to my teaching in the future by usi...

Today in lab we did a variety of different stations and made hypothesizes and observations about a variety of different phenomena. I learned about a bunch of different scientific phenomena as well as a new style of activities and how to use fast-activities to get students invested in learning Science. Will an Ice Cube melt faster in a metal pot or on a wood board? Hypothesis: The ice cube will melt faster on the wood because the pan insulates and keeps the cubes cold Observations: The ice melts much faster in the pan How can I explain what happened?     The pan also conducts the heat from outside and traps it because of its bowl shape, melting the ice faster. What questions does this raise?     Why does it melt faster in the pan but our metal water bottles keep things cold for very long? What will happen if we submerge a large Coke, a Large Diet coke, a mini-Coke, and a mini-Diet coke in water? Hypothesis: The smaller sodas will float and the larger ones will sink Ob...

 This week in class we had another continued discussion about evolution and natural selection. We discussed how natural selection works and worked on an activity to create our own children's book about evolution using art generated by the Dall-E 2 artificial intelligence.      Personally this week I learned how far evolution can advance and learned more about natural selection. the biggest thing that I learned was that evolution goes on forever and eventually can create creatures wholly unlike their ancient ancestors (as seen in The Dino and The Chicken) while also being able to stick with the same proven design as seen with Alligators. I can realate what we learned to my knowledge from previous classes about natural selection and how it works to change creatures into becoming more suited to their environment, however my newfound knowledge of mutations helps to fill in my previous gaps of understanding. I think I could apply this lesson to my teaching in the future b...