Investigation with Imagination

As a science teacher of students are new to a full hour of science each day I  have many obstacles, but I have many advantages as well.   My students' experiences up to this point is reading about science, some small investigations, but this is the first year for many that it is daily and investigation based.  The background knowledge they bring to the classroom is limited, but they bring excitement, wonder and interest each day to the science classroom.  In the season of testing, I am faced with preparing my fourth grade students to test on four years of science content, and I am trying to explore the content they may have missed, or have only read about in the past three years.


I have been working with physical science the last two weeks and on Friday after simulations, discussions and video I was ready to let my students apply their understanding of energy by building a roller coaster out of pipe insulation for the track and a marble as the car.  This is a widely used investigation in the science classroom and I was excited to see the students complete the work.  Many of my students have not experienced a roller coaster or a theme park, yet they approached this task with interest.  The students built the roller coasters with success and could identify the potential and kinetic energy throughout the process.  But I saw more than content being experienced.


As a faithful twitter reader I see many posts about learning, imagination, failure, cooperation, creativity and creating a love of learning in our students.  I witnessed these elements during this time in my classroom.  I know why people are afraid of all of these things: they are chaotic, messy, loud and time consuming.  But they are amazing and exhilarating and worth the mess and noise. It seemed fitting that roller coasters was the theme of the day.


The work of my students during this investigation reminded me of a David Jakes tweeted, "Right now, does education need ideas and imagination more than it needs action?" The roller coaster building started with students deciding what their teams would look like, and what their designs would look like for the roller coaster.  The students had to include a big hill, a small hill and a tunnel.  The rest was up to the team.  The teams designed using a creation app, then built the design the team agreed on, took a picture and then began to test.  What happened next was students failing, but being motivated and working together to adjust the design together to find a solution.  They were engaged and working, and the idea of failure does not seem like a proper label, although the design at first was a failure.  The learning and teaching was done student to student.  The students used the process of test, redesign, test, and celebrated a completed trip on the track.  Multiple times in my classroom students cheered and celebrated together the work they accomplished.  


After the initial success of a track came the imagination, creativity and the challenging work that students created for themselves.  They asked if they could add more track length if they could try more loops, curves or hills.  They tried things I could never have "taught" them, they tried things they imagined or their group created in working as a team.  The final part of the day of building was sharing each others work with a gallery walk.  They were proud to show and explain their design and were celebrated by classmates for their work.  


If nothing else I had a handful of students say to me after the investigation, "I love science" and that desire to learn and explore the subject further is a win for a me as a teacher.  They did not want to quit or clean up or move on to their next class for the day.  The love of learning, exploring and creating is something school and testing time often extinguish in students.  If students can leave my class and want more science and the desire to learn I think I have succeed for that day to take steps towards fostering life long learning.






Roller Coaster Building from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.