"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” (Albert Einstein) By the end of the year, we want to be swimming in data and be agile enough to use it!
For the past 12 years, we have enjoyed technology that lets us do science.
Science probes have been the core of our lab-based curriculum that keeps us out of our chair and sharing our inferences every week. We share the lab between two teachers so we can all have access to the equipment. We work in small groups of 4 as a class of 30. For many of us, it's our first opportunity to investigate phenomena with both our observations and data. We thrive in the lab when our tools are up to date and working well. It helps us spend our time discussing the limitations of the data, and repeating trials, rather than troubleshooting technology.
My Project
We will conduct experiments and learn to read the graphs so we can identify the temperature at which liquids and solids change phase. We can use the probes to collect data to build the relationships between variables like temperature, pressure and volume of gases. It is exciting to recognize the role that mathematics plays in science. The technology helps us see phenomena that we could not see otherwise. Students will learn the skills of how to use data as evidence to support claims as described in the Next Generation Science Standards: Claim --> Evidence --> Reasoning. In addition, we will learn to communicate our reasoning by explaining what we see in graphs and tables using language everyone can understand.
The graphing calculators will allow us to use the probes that might otherwise be obsolete.
We need this basic technology with the new, improved software so all 30 students in each class can work in the lab at the same time. Having the skills to interpret data and use our analysis to describe our reasoning will help us make better decisions. By practicing the skills of making a claim, collecting evidence and sharing our reasoning, we learn to swim others as we consider natural phenomena.
More than half of students from low‑income households
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