Planets v2.0, Fizzy Stuff v2.0, and Assistants

Fizzy stuff in Silver Surfers. Last week we graphed the amount of baking soda versus the amount of vinegar required to exhaust the fizziness. It did make a rather nice straight plot, as it ought. So I figured a counterexample might make the point that the straight line is remarkable - -that you don't always get a straight line. Enter, again, the yeast and peroxide. Since the fizziness is caused by an enzyme, it ought to be able to keep fizzing and fizzing no matter how much peroxide you slosh in there.

I think the experiment came out a little muddy, there were probably some dilution effects that I should have figured out how to work around, and I'm not sure the theoretical underpinnings were understood all that well, but I got a chance to exercise some improved technique involving Classroom Assistants.

Beginner's approach

Set out the three beakers. Weigh different amounts of yeast in them. Weigh the peroxide into them. Wait a minute, let everybody talk about what they see. Weigh more peroxide into them.

Advanced teaching technique

Ask for an assistant to set out the three beakers.

Ask for another assistant to weigh 5g of yeast into the first beaker.

Ask for another assistant to weigh 15g of yeast into the second beaker.

Ask for another assistant to weigh 25g of yeast into the third beaker.

Ask for another assistant to weigh 100g of peroxide into the first beaker.

Ask for another assistant to weigh 100g of peroxide into the second beaker.

Ask for another assistant to weigh 100g of peroxide into the third beaker.

and so forth.

Really, it's not all that different from cooking-with-kids at home. Except that ideally you figure out a way that you need at least 21 different things done that you couldn't possibly do yourself.

Both classes got to sniff some genuine ammonia, as in "Titan, a moon of Saturn, may have an ocean of liquid ammonia under its outer crust".

Sniffing is a definite winner. I wonder whether it's possible to think of something different to bring in for sniffing every single week all year.

Planets v2.0 - - long-time readers may remember the Lead Balloon of a demonstration over a year ago, where I brought in materials for scale models of the sun and planets. To an adult, the physical visualization and the counter-intuitiveness of the size ratios are astonishing. The class gave it the grand ho-hum.

A week ago, I asked the K class "Is there anything anybody would specifically like to request as a demo or activity?" and somebody piped up and asked, "how about a scale model of the solar system?". AHA! Now is my chance to replay the solar system (v2.0) under Cognitively Optimal Circumstances!

The show was greeted with - - well, I think they liked it pretty well, and it certainly kept focus, but I can't honestly finish that sentence with "odes and paeans of delight". And it still feels like there's something a little too abstract about "this corn grain is the earth, that basketball is the sun" - - something that the 6 yr old just can't get completely into. Still, when it's the child's request that brought the thing into class in the first place, he's willing to work the old gray matter pretty hard, and the kids sitting around him are hooked in too. I bet if the same model pops up in a couple years they'll be, as it were, primed up to "totally get it" in seconds.

Plus I managed to require about 15 assistants in setting out the model planets.

Ad astra per asperam

The K bunch have certainly developed the capacity to follow a long conversational thread. I come in and, as they say, release a conversational hare, and they're off like a pack of bloodhounds. I like to start the class with one news tidbit each week just to emphasize that there is always new material which won't be in your textbook or prepared curriculum. Lately there have been several news items about astronomy. Cassini sends back information suggestiong that one of Saturn's moons has rings of its own, and another one may have an ocean of liquid water (or ammonia perhaps) underneath its frozen methane outer shell. The Spitzer space telescope (yes, Spitzer, not Hubble - - did you know that there are four space telescopes?) detects a nearby star with dust clouds that appear to be in the pre-planetary stage, like our own solar system about 7 billion years back. And in the K class the hands sprout up like bamboo (on my mind because of the bamboo at Norwood Park, also called Dog Park, where they did a major thinning recently and now new shoots of bamboo are growing at about four feet per week), and the conversation takes off like, well, a rocket. I still bring in something intriguing to demonstrate each week, and reserve some time for The Question Box. They are enthusiastic about the demonstrations. This week it was Things that Do and Do Not Fizz with Baking Soda ( vinegar, alcohol, water, lemon juice). And if we don't get to the Question Box, woe betide us! Because those questions are important and the writers will insist and persist until they get their air time.

But our biggest problem is always that we run out of time in the midst of whatever it is, because everybody has something to add, or some point they want clarified, or some extension they are puzzled by. Are you wondering whether your child is participating adequately? The answer is Yes.

Also due here is a shout-out to the classroom guides who provide just the right quiet corrections to keep an animated fifteen-person conversation from turning into a chaotic hubbub.

Over in SilverSurfers, I am following a textbook suggestion that the older group, developmentally speaking, starts to appreciate more leadership rather than unstructured topic selection; and also appreciates topics that continue and grow over time. So, we started with Things that Do and Do Not fizz with Baking Soda, but then (thanks to A.T. for the suggestion) segued into How Much Vinegar does it take to "use up" a certain amount of baking soda. Last week we collected data to answer the question, and this week we all made graphs. I don't think they've graphed experimental data before, and you could hear the electrical crackling in the room as twenty trillion neurons said "whooooaaah.. this is something new, and I get it".

I'm also trying to have us learn a couple new bone names each week. We hang velcro-tagged labels (in Montessori lingo, Nomenclature Cards) on the classroom skeleton. The children are then free to examine these tags, and remove them and reapply them, during the school week.

The What Kids Do textbook also says this is an age where the sense of fairness and justice is developing and is a key interest. That sounds nice and sweet, right? We develop a sense of justice. How lovely. What the textbook author (who is at home giggling as his readers get out into the classroom and discover the subtle understatement) omitted was that this really means a prolonged hurricane season of melodramatic and tragic storms at every microscopic suggestion of unequal treatment. Who got to sit next to The Science Guy today? Why didn't I get to? Who got to help hand out the graph paper? Does everybody get a turn at opening the Question Box? When is my turn? He sniffed the vinegar twice! and so on.