Tag Archives: NGSS

Big Music Experiment

Geoscience, , , , , , , , ,

As a comprehensive performance task, the students were given the task of creating, and running a music experiment investigating whether music with words, music without words, or no music (control group) would do better at a comprehension task, as well as retention task.

It was a nifty set-up.  I randomized the students with an online generator to put students in the control group, five students in the Condition 1 group (music with lyrics), five students in the Condition 2 group (music without lyrics) and the remaining students were the scientist/leader, data analyzer, etc. for their group.

The materials included:

  • five blue thumb drives with 8 songs with lyrics 
  • five blue thumb drives with 8 songs without lyrics
  • Instructions for Condition 1
  • Instructions for Condition 2
  • Instructions for the control group
  • 10 class chrome books for the two Conditions
  • Data sheets
  • Articles for the students to read in each condition, and keys provided to scientist/leader of each group.
  • Timer

Results

Unfortunately, the results were rather inconclusive.  With such small condition groups, it was difficult to generalize the results.  In addition, many of the students were game for the first half of the experiment, but did not put very much effort into the second half of the experiment regarding data analysis, research, and drawing scientific conclusions.

Other issues with the experiment included an extremely small sample size.  For this experiment to be truly accurate it would have to have been conducted across all five of my classes, with the classes each divided into thirds.  As I am currently teaching three separate types of classes, we had neither the technological resources, nor the student resources to complete the experiment properly.

It was successful in that the students realized how much effort goes into making an experiment work and how little it takes to make it inaccurate.  They also showed much more interest because the experiment was about a topic they have a vested interest in – listening to music while they work.  Despite the research to the contrary, many still insist they do much better when listening to music.  It is true there are always outliers, but so far the only exception to the musical rule of thumb is music without lyrics, or music in either form when performing mathematical computations.

Gemklocx Lab

Biology, Experiments, Geoscience, , , , , , ,

Thank you AVID Science 1, a summer conference I took recently.  This was a wonderfully ingenious lab I did with my Geoscience students, both periods 1 and 2.  It does require quite a bit of set-up and some rather ordinary materials.  Once you are organized, it works out great, as long as the students follow the rules of the lab.

Materials:

  • 2 small paper plates
  • 4 twist ties
  • 2 straws
  • Aluminum foil 12 x 12
  • 1 small paper cup
  • 2 paper clips
  • 3 rubber bands
  • 1 sheet of paper
  • 8 cm of tape

Procedures

The students each received a handout (provided by AVID)  Think It-Build It-Write It-The Gemklocx, which explained the procedure, in addition to the PowerPoint and my oral directions.

There were two main parts of the lab, which is designed to teach students the importance of following EXACT procedures during lab experiments.

First, each student partners with another student forming a team.  Each team receives one set of materials to create and build a model of their own originality.  The time limit is 20 minutes.  At the same time, each team MUST record their procedure, item by item so that the next team can recreate their EXACT model without being able to see it.  All materials must be used and the students were not allowed to add any materials.

Second, the teams were told to hide their models so the other teams could not see them.  Each team was given the exact same materials as previously in addition to the written procedures provided by one of the random teams.  These teams had only 10 minutes to recreate the original model of the first team.

It was one of the best labs.  It was early in the year, and the students were so engaged in the entire process.  They loved created something their own.  Their follow-up reflections regarding the lab concept, procedures, ease and/or difficulty revealed the majority of the students believed the writing of the procedures specific enough for another team to follow was, indeed, the most difficult part.  I look forward to doing it again next year.