On Friday, I was so pleased to be able to return to one of my favorite days of the year, High-Interest Day at Brookfield Elementary School. This is a day where I have been able to bring the concepts of physics to k-5 graders. You may be asking yourself, "Elementary students doing physics?" YES! Not just experimenting, but understanding the concepts behind the physics of electricity and sound. This is a very special day I have had the opportunity to be involved in since 2017. So, how are we able to bring the concepts of electricity and sound traditionally taught to high school 11th and 12th graders to the elementary level? There are a few keys 1) make it a hands-on experience 2) remove the mathematical calculations and make it practical. In the past, I had the luck of bringing a handful of my physics students with me to guide the elementary students through the concepts that they had learned over the course of the year. But in my new role as a Teaching and Learning Speciali
Please don’t shy away from this post as only for science teachers. I would love to hear from others using playlists or thinking about using playlists for feedback and insight. Storyline As summer is winding down, I’m looking to wrap up my big task this summer which was to align my curriculum to new science standards. Starting big picture was creating a rich driving question or anchoring experience (called anchor phenomenon in the science world) which we could use to craft a driving question for our unit. This question requires multiple steps to reach a complete solution or explanation. Each of these steps of the ultimate solution is framed as a smaller question that needs to be answered. By answering these smaller questions, we collect the pieces to the driving question. The process of collecting these pieces and joining them together is not simply referred to as a unit of instruction. We call it a storyline because these pieces build on each other. They are connected. In units o