Light, Shadows and a Webquest

What are These SCIENTISTS up to?

We are finishing up our explorations of light with a webquest involving light and shadows, natural sources of light as well as some things that simply reflect (like the moon), and finally some confirmation of light traveling in straight lines.  My budding scientists had their work sent to them through Google Classroom.  They simply opened up the work, clicked on the links within the questions and answered from the interactive games. Classroom also allows the children to easily turn the work in when they are done.

The children were able to work at their own pace, test their own ideas and observe the outcomes.  This is yet another method for students to utilize so they can learn like scientists.  In the end, the students' answers were their way of explaining what they saw and how they understood it.

One student's notes from the online interactive game.

In the follow up activity the next day, the children made a t-chart of natural sources of lights and some items that simply reflect in their Notability Science folder. This led to the review of transparent, translucent and opaques items.  Our third grade review is complete as is our new fifth grade learning.

There is nothing better than watching a child take control of his or her own learning.  By allowing the children the opportunity to see various ways to learn science they are also learning the real ways scientists learn and use science.  The unit's close revolved around the class acting as scientists who use real life scientific methods from which to learn.  We come up with questions, use resources such as books and the internet to learn from, then we experiment or try it out and finally observe the outcomes.  This almost always leads to more questions...