Going into Haw River Elementary school I was not confident with the bubbles experiment and it showed when I attempted to do it with my students. From the beginning when we did this activity in our Science class I was not sure how well this experiment would work with 2nd grade students whom we had never met before. It's great that the activity involved bubbles because every child loves bubbles, but overall I believe the concept of the activity was to advanced for them.
What worked with the experiment was the penny, and tooth pick not floating in the water, but we still had trouble making the paper clip float. It was hard to explain to the students why the paper clip didn't float because the paper clip was supposed to float. We even tried different ways of putting the paper clip in, in order not to break the surface of the water. In order to have an item that was guaranteed to float we added hair ties to the experiment. Another difficulty with the experiment was explaining to the students what surface tension means. My partner and I explained that it was the skin of the surface, but the students still did not understand the concept.
If I was to do this experiment again I would change the Bubble Basics activity. I would not use a paper clip because the students and I had difficulty trying to get it to float. I would also come up with another way to explain surface tension, although I still think that this concept is to advanced for second graders. I believe that with some changes this activity could be a good experiment, but it should not be done how it is written in the packet.
finding nemo bathroom
1 year ago
We had trouble getting the paper clip to float as well and we could not find anything to substitute for the paper clip. The point of the floating portion of the experiment was to demonstrate what surface tension is and then when the paper clip would not float - it was difficult to explain why the paper clip was not floating because we "broke the surface tension" when the paper clip was supposed to demonstrate and really introduce the concept of surface tension and it was not working. The kids did love the bubbles though :) I really think that with some more background knowledge for both the students and the teachers about surface tension, the experiments would be much more effective! The students might also need to be a little older then second grade...
ReplyDeleteLiz -
ReplyDeleteI was equally unsure of how to explain "surface tension" to the group of students we were working with. We eventually came up with the phrase "skin of the water" to describe how the molecules were staying together - never actually even delving into the topic of surface tension persay.
Our group was still able to make inferences about why some of the objects floated and other didn't, as well as while the bubbles "stayed" in the soapy water and not the tap.
Overall, proved to be a little less daunting than I was imagining it would be!
Melissa Eller
I completely agree with you Liz. Alex and I had a lot of the same frustrations. We felt like we should have explained surface tension before even doing the experiment so that they could know how to think during the experiment. I felt constrained by the inquiry model because it did not give us an opportunity I felt to introduce surface tension. Our students did not understand the concept either. They loved playing with the bubbles though and seeing which items floated and which ones didn't. Thankfully our students got the paper clip to float on the first try. We were definitely amazed, so we just didn't mess with it.
ReplyDeleteLovely Liz,
ReplyDeleteI think everyone had the same problems with time and the fact that some of the items just did not want to cooperate. I am so glad to hear that you were able to at least skim the surface on the actual topic behind the experiement though. I didn't even attempt based on the time and their attention span. I think that next time we should possibly have back up items in case an issue occurs again. Maybe tweaking it will help us better understand/teach it and will help our students grasp the actual meaning behind the bubbles.
And I am also so glad you edited your title's grammatical error for me, Lizzy. Awesome :)
Experiment**
ReplyDeleteI agree about the paperclip. However, once we actually got it to float the children were amazed! And of course then they wanted to try. We brought extra objects too but I think for our group it just ended up taking too much time. I feel I would stick to just 3 objects next time. I like the idea of a hairtie. I feel next time we should be providing a better introduction and figure out a simplified way of discussing surface tension.
ReplyDelete