Monday, August 12, 2013

Scientific Inquiry, Lifeskills Style!

 Our class L-O-V-E-S science experiments! We're studying baseball this month, talking about the history of the sport, famous players and the science behind the game. We've had a lot of fun talking about physics (yup, Lifeskills rocks a good physics lesson every now and then!). To illustrate some of the concepts we've talked about in our recent Unique Learning lessons about force, velocity, etc., we completed a science experiment to determine if the size and weight of a ball impacts how fast it falls to the ground. Enjoy!

Our Wellness teachers were kind enough to let us raid their equipment for our experiment.
We touched each ball, talking about the size, shape, weight and color. 
 We had a great time dropping each ball from eye level (note to self, demonstrate first so you don't get smacked in the face with a ball!)
 We made some predictions about which balls would hit the ground fastest...
 Then we answered some questions about our predictions using our overhead (Shameless Unique Learning Systems Plug of the Day... the worksheets that accompany science experiments are adapted to meet the needs of students with limited reading skills. Adapting/creating worksheets like the ones found through Unique used to take up a HUGE chunk of my prep time...Now I can use this time to blog work on other classroom projects).
 Our peers were super helpful- it's infinitely more effective for our peers to model tasks, behaviors, social exchanges (it's just way cooler to have a friend help you than a teacher!).
 We worked through each of the steps of the scientific inquiry process until we had drawn our conclusions.
 After discussing our conclusions, we headed back to our seats to wrap up our experiment by completing a Unique worksheet about what we discovered through this lesson.
We've got a lot of fun science experiments in store for this year- we'll definitely be sharing, so stay tuned!












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