With the bubble activity at Haw River Elementary school with the 2nd grade students, I can not say if the student's did or did not have misconceptions. These were students that I had never met before, therefore, it was hard to tell if they had any misconceptions and it was hard to measure their conceptual change. Due to the fact that the students did not know what surface tension was and that the students were only interested in playing with the bubbles I did not notice any misconceptions. If the students did have any misconceptions, I do not know if their misconceptions would have changed by doing this activity. I think that the next activity we do with the parachutes will have a greater affect on changing the students misconceptions.
In my 4th grade classroom I have been able to see my students misconceptions change. Recently we just completed a unit on magnetism and electricity. With this unit the students were able to build circuits and test the strength of magnets. When building the circuits the students had many misconceptions about how a battery and wires could light up a light bulb. Once the circuits were built it was great to see how the students misconceptions were changed with experimenting with the circuits and learning more knowledge about electricity.
It was wonderful to see this in my classroom because in my classroom I will also have to gauge students conceptual understanding. I will do this by organizing principles of science in order for my students to learn new information more effectively. I was able to gauge the students conceptual change when I could notice how the students were able to rethink and restructure their prior knowledge about electricity and magnetism. I want my students to be able to apply their knowledge to new concepts.
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I know it was difficult to conduct the experiment since we had no relationship with the children involved. We had no prior knowledge of their learning so I can see how it was difficult for you to decipher what they knew and how they knew it. The only way I was able to do so was by simply asking them to make predictions before we started the experiment. This allowed me to see what they expected. Remember, KWLs are easy and can really help, too! It might not have gone as well as we had hoped, but it still gave us experience to reflect on when thinking about our placements and our own classrooms.
ReplyDeleteI loved your honesty in saying that you did not know what the misconceptions from the bubble were exactly. It was definitely hard to identify them since we had so little time with the students regarding that topic. I also enjoyed reading your thoughts about the magnetism activity in your fourth grade classroom. Its always encouraging to see students develop new ideas and understandings.
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