What I Taught Wednesday.

Here's an outline of what I taught yesterday. A random day.

Throughout the week, we've been looking at how to DO science and how to WRITE about science (as contrasted with the LEARNING science we did last week.) We were discussing Reaction Time; I tossed an orange to every student and they each returned it to me. They had no idea what I was doing, and I had their full attention. We defined RT and discussed how quickly the brain can process the outside world.

I then introduced a lab - one that I did in high school. A partner holds a meter stick vertically, and student 1 puts an open hand directly below the ruler. Without warning, the partner drops the ruler and it falls toward the ground, through the student's open hand. The student squeezes his/her fist in order to catch the ruler. The distance that it falls (measured by where the student's hand catches the ruler) is a measure of reaction time.

Each student did this 5 times, then calculated their personal drop-distance (the average of their five catches). Then each student put their data on the board and all students copied the class data. Before we started the lab, students had to make predictions about their own drop-distance, the class average, and whether there would be gender differences. After they gathered the results, they calculated the averages and for homework, they each had to write a 1-page mini lab report addressing the hypotheses they made, their own/class results, and draw conclusions.

We've DONE two experiments and WRITTEN two lab reports this week; Friday in class we'll discuss issues of experimental error and sample size and data/graphs. Several of the kids has profound difficulties doing long division on paper, so it may be a challenging topic.

No class today; kids are on a field trip and there are a few of us left here to do work. tata!