Week 4
October 29, 2018
On this episode of Hands-On Science, we took on Grade 5 Human Organ Systems. Our workshop consisted of making stethoscopes and tracking our pulse, an artsy take on our bodies and the stuff inside, pop-bottle lungs and creating our own (moving) hands!
Our website for Organ Systems was one of my favourites, where we not only got our hands into science, but our whole bodies! Check it out for some super fun and engaging activities to do with grade 5s!
Hands-On Science – Grade 5, Human Organ Systems
Week 3
October 15, 2018
After having a break for Thanksgiving, we are back in action here at Hands-On Science! This week it is Grade 6s and they are covering Biodiversity.
Students were kept busy in the workshop this week, as they made a habitat diorama with Ms. Reynolds based around a given animal, they worked on some soil filtration and the different components of healthy, biodiverse soil with Ms Boland, and they had fun with Ms. Bain making food web jenga!
Finally Ms. Lapenskie and I are able to share our media portion! We have created a website with a whole bunch of resources for the students and teachers to use. Check it out here!
Hands-On Science – Grade 6, Biodiversity
Week 2
October 1, 2018
Our second week of our internship was for Grade 7 Pure Substances and Mixtures. The education team of this project had some amazing experiments going such as making lemonade, making slime, and learning how to filter water using things from nature!
Week 1
September 24, 2018
Our first Hands On Science was a success! Ms. Bain, Ms. Reynolds, Ms. Crowley and Ms. Boland did such an amazing job creating this workshop. Our first week was with Grade 8 students and we focused on Cells.
We had four stations running, we had a gummy bear osmosis experiment, an artsy-take on plant and animal cells, an onion cell under a microscope and a new, creative take on the naked egg experiment.
At Ms. Bain’s station, she had students experimenting with gummy bears and various liquids to see how the bears changed over time. The students had four liquids that they chose at random, and they had to use the various senses to guess what liquids they were. Some were easy to distinguish (vinegar, coloured water, corn syrup, coke) while others were a little bit trickier (dish soap, vegetable oil, salt water). They students then made predictions about how the liquids would impact the gummy bear. Over time, the bears changed and students recorded their observations. By the end of the hour session, some of the bears changed quite a lot, and the kids seemed really intrigued! And even got a little snack out of the activity!
Hands-On-Science: Internship Introduction
For my Honours degree, I have taken a Media and Digital Literacy course, and I was given the privilege of working with Hands on Science, run by Dr. Chris Murray. Hands on Science is a program run with collaboration between the Faculty of Education and elementary schools in the Simcoe area who bring students to participate on science workshops at Lakehead lead by teacher candidates. This program has been in effect for a few years now and has positive reviews from both teachers and students. This program gives the future teachers useful experience in teaching science, and allows the students to gain a new perspective on topics in science. The goal of the program is promote the sciences by creating fun and interactive ways to learn. I will be working to post updates on my internship on my blog throughout the year, and am excited to share this experience and all the awesome lesson ideas we come up with.
I am in the Media team of this internship, which means I am not technically in charge of developing these lessons, but it is just so much fun to see the students exploring science that I find myself at all of the workshops. I will post pictures of my colleagues teaching and all of the awesome activities and experiments the students get to do.
This year, the media team for this internship wants to create an online classroom with resources for teachers and students to use to further their learning, both before and after they come to visit. This classroom will have digital lessons regarding the workshop they attended, and will also have additional resources for those who need extra help or want to extend their learning beyond the scope of their visit. Here we will also provide access to any photos taken during their visit and a link to a Kahoot! for the students to play and test their knowledge once they return back to school. The education team is going to focus on effective delivery for hands-on experiments and lessons to get the students as involved as possible, and the media team is going to try their best to extend that goal into the digital technology. This means finding and creating digital tools that will enhance student learning, regardless of where the teacher is in their unit plan.
This program is an excellent way for both future educators and students to work together for everyone’s benefit. Knowing that this program can be so successful and has such great potential has inspired me to take the momentum from the positive responses from the hands-on workshops, and continue through the media aspect.
Learning with Ms. Langford 