Help! A lack of Classroom Scales is Weighing Us Down!
My science lab needs a classroom set of 10 OHaus balances, with 5 stacking mass sets.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. M.'s classroom raised $531
This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
Step into the Science Lab...
See the mobiles hanging in front of the windows? The first graders made these as part of a performance assessment after learning about balance. Ask a first grader to describe his mobile to you and he'll point out how counterweights keep the whole thing stable and balanced.
If you visit while a third grade class is working, you'll see them exploring the properties of water using "real science stuff!" A third grade student will show you how she can use a pipette to place water on a penny, one drop at a time. "Look!" she'll say. "See that round shape the water makes? That's called a dome. The reason the water does that is because of surface tension."
Fourth graders making models of tributaries, fifth graders testing their predictions of whether objects will sink or float... it's all in a day's work at our high-poverty charter school in urban Rhode Island.
Great things are happening in my school's science lab, where students from Kindergarten through fifth grade visit me twice a week. We are lucky to have access to excellent standards-based curriculum and many terrific materials (the stuff that "real scientists use"). However, while beginning a Sinking and Floating unit with my fifth graders, I noticed that one essential science tool was missing from our classroom--accurate, sturdy, age-appropriate balances with which students could measure the weights of the objects they were testing.
After identifying this need, a poster formed itself in my mind, something like you'd see in a Wild West movie. "WANTED: a classroom set of balances for use in an elementary science classroom. Good ones." The 10 scales and 5 sets of colorful gram weights that I've requested in this proposal will allow my fifth grade students to work in small groups to predict and ACCURATELY measure the weights of their sink-or-float objects.
These age-appropriate balances are easy to use, read, and manipulate, and will help me teach the important skill of weighing in grams to my young scientists. We will use these balances for a wide range of investigations, including my fifth grader's study of sinking and floating and my second grader's exploration of the properties of solids and liquids.
My students also need these terrific, colorful gram weights, which will be easier for them to manipulate than standard brass weights. The color-coded weights will be easy to use for even my youngest students (Kindergarten). Plus, their bright colors will keep them from "disappearing" in our busy science classroom!
But the buck doesn't stop there. These high-quality balances will come in handy in my work with other grades and in the study of other topics as well. They will become well-used and essential classroom tools in our science lab.
Your support will make it possible for my elementary school students to learn how to accurately measure objects, an essential skill that is supported by national and state science standards and curriculum. Further, the engagement that comes from using hands-on, "real scientist" tools will help me achieve my goal of developing a passion for science in all of my students.
More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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