Week 13 Blog

                                        Week 13 Lab 04/23/2025

This week in lab, I learned quite a bit. We started lab off by looking over our homework from last week which was about how we could modify the activity we did last week in lab to make it suitable for second graders. The modifications I made were to demonstrate the electric conductivity test in front of the class and make it a discussion instead of each group doing it, and for the volume, instead of each group testing it for every object, I would change it to one object for each group. While these are good modifications, I learned this week in lab from reviewing and discussing that in second grade they are looking more for the "observable" properties, and that I could just strike out the volume testing and the electric conductivity testing as a whole. This is something that I did not know I could do, but makes a lot of sense if the learning goal for second grades is to find the observable properties. Then, we did an activity with dice to find the volume of a large dice and a small dice, and used an equation to find the volume. Lastly, we did an activity with M&M's to see which color spread the fastest. My group set a timer for two minutes for each M&M then measured the millimeters of the color spread of each M&M. The red spread the farthest, and we thought maybe it was because the dye of the red was the strongest/most potent. Then, we changed a variable of the experiment and tested them in sugar water. What we noticed from this is that in the sugar water, the M&M's did not spread as far, which I thought was interesting. I thought that maybe it was because the sugar made the water denser, or the particles of the dye and sugar were fighting for the space, and the sugar won. Overall, I learned a lot in this week's lab and it was very interesting and engaging. 

Thinking back to my prior knowledge through my previous science classes, I can recall using a formula to find the volume of objects but, honestly I had kind of forgotten about it so this lab was a good refresher. I have never done an experiment like the M&M one before in my own pre-college science classes, so this was not something I could relate back to my prior knowledge, but I really enjoyed it. 

I can apply what we learned this week in lab to my future career as a teacher in many ways. I now know that I can make modifications to activities to better suit my students and that there is a lot of flexibility in creating science activities which I think is something that will be very helpful to me when planning lessons and activities in the future. I can use the M&M activity with my future students along with the dice activity. Overall, what we did and learned this week in lab are all things I will be able to use in my future career as a elementary teacher. 

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