Sunday, May 9, 2010

More Magnificent Magnets!

In the last week we have really gotten into some super awesome projects in our Electromagnetism unit! We have built an electromagnet, a telegraph, AND soon a buzzer and a simple motor! 

The best part of science is watching the kids work as a team. The kids work in groups for allof  their experiments and watching them help one another and teach each other is always fantastic for a teacher. After our first big experiment we made a lists of positives and negatives when it comes to team work. The kids pointed out how it is hard to be patient when working with teams and it is hard to always explain everything you are doing because you "have all the information up in your head," but they also said that teamwork means you don't have to do as much work as you would if you were working alone and you end up learning a lot more AND you have way more fun! I think this kind of team work (especially in a multi-age classroom) teaches kids skills they will be able to take with them throughout the rest of their schooling and hopefully lives!

For the first experiment, the fourth graders were a team!

The goal was to make an electromagnet!

Looks like it works!

The middle schoolers and Jorgie made up the second team!

I think Jorgie liked her team!

The middle schoolers made great teachers!

Jorgie's turn to use the electromagnet!

Fourth graders working together!

Don't mix those wires!

For the telegraph experiment, Dalton and Arlo made a great team!

Gabe, Quinn, and Jorgie were the other team!

Each team had to build their own telegraph and then connect the two telegraphs together.

They then got to send messages to each other using Morse code! SO COOOOL!

Up next... buzzers and MOTORS!

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