Scavenger Hunts and Magic Milk

I'm now 2.25 days into 2nd semester and teaching Physical Science.  I have to say, I love it!  I loved (some of) my freshmen, but having upperclassmen is night and day.  Anyway, I just thought I'd share a bit about what we're doing in Physical Science this week.  No, this isn't going to be a weekly post.  I just thought I'd do it since it's the first week of school for the students.

Monday: Teacher Workday

Tuesday: 
After boring the students to death with rules, syllabus stuff, and lab safety procedures, we did a human scavenger hunt where they had a list of criteria ("wearing a white shirt," "ate cereal for breakfast," "has met a celebrity," etc.) and they had to go around the room finding people that met the criteria.  It was good, because it got them up, moving around, and was "non-science"... or so they thought.  At the end of class, I got them all back in their seats and we talked about data collection, time efficiency, thinking outside of the box (asking me to fill in criteria), unexpected discoveries, etc.  I actually created the discussion on the fly because I noticed my first period class was going to have about 10 minutes left after finishing.  Gotta love thinking on your feet!

Wednesday:
We did notes on the scientific method, and then did a scientific method lab.  They had to make predictions, hypotheses, experiment, and draw conclusions on my "Magic Milk" lab.  I love this demonstration/lab because it requires only household items (whole milk, food coloring, dish soap, Q-tips), and it has a "cool!" moment to it.  People with kids, I highly recommend!  Let me know if you're interested, and I can send you my lab.  Or Google it.  It's pretty easy to find.

Thursday:
We're doing measurement notes (everybody's favorite.... *yawn*) and a pretty standard measurement lab.  They're measuring length, volume, mass, and temperature.  Yes, it's boring, but this is a pretty important skill to learn, so I wanted to really focus on it.

PS, tonight's also Open House.  I may leave today's lab set up.  I have to say, it's pretty impressive to come into a classroom and see three-arm balances and lab glassware.

Friday:
They're reviewing graphing (again, *yawn*) and graphing an experiment.  Last semester, my students seriously struggled with the parts of an experiment (independent and dependent variables, constants, controls, etc.), so I made up this graphing lab to help this semester's students.  They're reading an experiment, identifying the parts, and graphing the data.  For homework though, they're looking through their cell phone contact lists and creating bar and pie graphs that show categories of people (family, school friends, etc.).  Because it sounded so fun, I actually did it, too.

In case you're interested:
Family: 39%; College Friends (undergrad and graduate): 17%; Other Friends: 17%; Colleagues (past and present): 17%; Official: 11%

Just try and fight the urge to evaluate your contact list... (Mom, you can run the numbers on that contact sheet on your fridge).