For 5 days, students in 7th grade science have been designing, building, and testing paper roller coasters to develop and apply their knowledge of potential and kinetic energy. This project has been incredibly engaging for all of the 7th graders. As the building days stretched beyond what we had originally allotted, I reverted to my pre-NGSS days, worrying about how much content bang we were getting for the time we were investing. I was wondering if we could really afford to spend any more time on teaching two small pieces of content. How could we justify spending all of this time for just those two ideas: kinetic energy and potential energy. However, as I reflected on the project with the NGSS in mind, I realized that we were doing much more than just applying our knowledge of kinetic and potential energy. We were, in fact, getting a lot of bang for our buck. Students were working not only with content, but also with science and engineering practices and the engineering design cycle. In the box on the left, you can see some of the science and engineering practices included in this project. Beyond that, students experienced the integration of science and engineering. They used science to solve an engineering problem. In designing the roller coaster, they had to work within certain constraints (size, materials, time, etc.) and with given criteria for success (size, required components, etc.). They used the engineering design process throughout the project. Once I realized all of the NGSS components that were contained in the project, I felt much more comfortable about the time we spent on it. With NGSS, process is as important for students to learn/experience as traditional "content" is. | Practices Used in this Activity
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3 Comments
2/1/2015 01:44:33 pm
Our grade 8 science class are doing a roller foster project as well, which also includes math (budgets) and English components. The grade 8s are in Disney right now participating in the Disney kids science camps learning more about the science behind roller coasters!
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Jennifer Gable
2/3/2015 02:16:50 pm
You can see the joy of learning upon the faces of your students. So it is good you gave in to the time and not limited their learning experiences. I have noticed my students are experiencing the learning blues. I am going to have them create a creature that applies concepts of Mendelian Genetics. Hopefully this will pull the out of the funk they are in.
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David Grossman
2/3/2015 02:39:29 pm
Jennifer, that sounds like fun. Good luck. Blog about it if you get a chance; I'd love to hear how it goes.
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