Keystone Weekly
volume 4, issue 4        October 14, 2002

This week's Key Points: *Kit Use: Motion and Design (STC),* *Web Pick of the Week,* *Awesome Science!,* and *New Resource for Educators*
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Rosalind Tharpe teaches third, fourth, seventh, and eighth grade at Finletter Elementary School in the School District of Philadelphia. Three years ago, Rosalind decided to start working with STC's Motion and Design kit because "it introduces students to the physics of motion and technological design." In this kit, students design and build vehicles of their own, applying concepts such as friction and kinetic and potential energy. In Rosalind's years working with the kit, it continued to appeal to her, as she discovered that it "provides an environment in which students feel secure." She comments, "Children naturally like to build and design. I found this kit satisfies their natural curiosity to build, investigate, and design."

Teaching several grade levels has afforded Rosalind an uncommon perspective on her students' progress and the kit's efficacy. She first used Motion and Design with a third grade class, but didn't finish all of the lessons. And then when she taught fourth grade in the following year, she found that her class was made up of primarily the same students that she'd had in third grade the year before and so she looped lessons through to that class. She says, "This was an excellent opportunity to determine student understanding of the concepts and solve design problems using the previous year's collected data."

Along with standard classroom use, Rosalind had an interesting experience when she served as a Teacher Coach for student teachers at Drexel University. Discussing how she worked with Motion and Design in this setting, she says, "I modeled lesson 13, which introduces cost requirement in design. The high school student teachers felt this kit could be used in high school with adaptations. I also took two students from my classroom to assist with the distribution of materials. These fourth grade students assisted the college students with building and designing the vehicles. The student teachers and the professors were impressed with the background knowledge these two students possessed concerning science and technology."

Rosalind appreciates that this kit provides "the process skills in methods of designing and developing solutions." She adds, "It also afforded students an opportunity to experiment and design specifications for testing and evaluating a solution. It helped them develop criteria for judging performance and to realize the impact of their solution. Finally, they were able to evaluate the impact of modifying a system to improve performance." And it was fun too! Rosalind reports that her students really enjoyed the kit, and that they "looked forward to building, designing and working in a group to meet the challenges of each new lesson." Beyond the immediate scope of the kit, Rosalind finds that her students "learn to appreciate how science and particularly technological design could solve practical problems in the world."

Preparing to use Motion and Design was not complicated. Rosalind likes that the individual pieces are labeled and easy to identify, and she assigns a "Materials Manager" to assist with each lesson's preparation, which makes things much easier. Rosalind did encounter a few difficulties in executing the lessons according to the instructions. She explains, "Some students wanted to build an individual vehicle or they did not want to dismantle the vehicle to begin a new activity. The pieces were small. The students lost quite a few parts, which prevented other teams from having enough parts. Students became frustrated with drawings and their inability to attach pieces to wheels or the frames. There are several lessons in which teacher preparation was necessary. You [the teacher] need to know the parts and become familiar with the technological designs."

Unfortunately, the teacher's guide presented some problems. Rosalind says that it's confusing, and comments, "The teacher's guide should have the same pages as the student book. It was difficult to follow and it took several lessons to get used to using the guide and student book. The record sheets could have been placed in an appendix. Many of the sheets had pertinent information on the other side. This made it difficult to copy activity sheets that were not in the student book. The guide would have been easier to use if it were in a binder. The steps in the student book were difficult to follow." Rosalind managed to derive some value from these irritations, and she says, "This difficulty encouraged students to use critical thinking and problem solving skills."

Rosalind also had a few problems with generating suitable assessment for this kit. She comments, "The assessment was difficult because the kit and activities are total cooperative group science activities. Teacher-made individual activities and assessments must be developed to successfully evaluate a student's understanding of the concepts. Time must be built into the lesson for reflection and monitoring individual student progress." For ease, Rosalind divided some lessons into two sessions.

Despite the issues that have cropped up, Rosalind enjoys working with Motion and Design, and is eager to continue. She says, "I have used several other kits and I found the Motion and Design kit and the concepts easy to teach whenever I used this kit. I personally enjoyed working with the materials and with most of the activities in the unit. It truly is inquiry-based." She's found that the kit needs "minimal refurbishing and can be used for many years to come." Rosalind is currently using Motion and Design with eighth graders who she sees one period per week. She says, "In my eighth grade class, I am adapting the lessons to align with the technological design standards for the eighth graders. Some students ask me when I'll be returning to their class to build the vehicles. They cannot wait for my class!"

She also plans to feature the kit in staff development sessions with the teachers in her community, using it to encourage inquiry-based science in classrooms. In the future, she'd like to develop several types of assessments and rubrics, and integrate other content areas into the lessons.

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"The Adventures of Amelia the Pigeon" project is a new interactive website with supporting lesson plans and hands- on activities to illustrate science concepts to children in grades K-4. This animated storybook adventure about a girl and her pet pigeon engages children in scenarios that explore the concept of remote sensing. Through the chapters of the story, students gradually learn about the ideas behind NASA scientists' use of satellite imagery to better understand the Earth's environmental changes.

This is a fun and engaging resource, and the images and text are large enough that you could even read it with a group of students all at once, or students could navigate the site on their own. (Requires Flash to view the animations, which can be downloaded from the site.)

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Astronomers reported last week on the discovery of the largest space object in our solar system—a rock about half Pluto's size—since Pluto itself was discovered in 1930.

The discoverers are calling the object "Quaoar" (pronounced kwa-whar), and believe this object to be the largest observed to date among the frozen rocks that compose the Kuiper Belt, which extends beyond Pluto and at least one- fifth the way to the nearest star.

Find out much more about this discovery through the link above.

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This new book, "Girls at the Center: Girls and Adults Learning Science Together," offers tested programs and ready-to-use materials that invite girls and adult partners to become enthusiastic science learners. "Girls at the Center" is the result of a four-year collaboration of The Franklin Institute Science Museum and the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. and was field-tested with multi-cultural audiences in 42 sites nationwide.

For more details, click the link above.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9819641.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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