The Scientific Method
Posted by Kathryn on 13th August and posted in Activites, Fun things, Science, Teaching, Teaching Resources, Videos
I’ve increased the number of class periods C1 studies science from two a week to three a week. Right now, I’m focusing on what real scientists do. For second and third graders this can be a puzzling thing. In order to introduce the scientific method, I demonstrated the diet coke/mentos fountain last Friday.
[youtube=http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=LY3cr5vm1oY]
On Monday, I introduced students to the idea of the scientific method. I gave them a handout with a nice diagram of the scientific method and pertinent vocabulary terms on the reverse (links go to two pdf files). After we went over them, I quizzed the students orally.
Next week, I’ll let the students get in their groups and they will start talking about what variables they want to manipulate to try to figure out the important ingredient or conditions for the fountain. They will also have to determine the measure they will use as their dependent variable. The students will have to write a hypothesis and procedure to test their hypothesis. Once that is complete, the students will actually test their hypothesis by gathering data (woo hoo, playing outside). Finally, they will create a poster outlining their experiment.
I’ll keep you updated as we go through the procedure.
