Change and Stability Planning

SJB Science Focus:  Term 3

Learning Focus

Learning focus for the term for SJB teachers:

• the art of questioning to push for depth with students.

Overarching skill focus for the students:

• gathering and interpreting data

Context:  Change

There are many directions in which a unit on Change and Stability could go.  

The Nature of Science elements looked at are:

• Investigating in science: Gather and interpret data (observation/inference and measurement).

What it means to gather and interpret data from tki:

Learners make careful observations and differentiate between observation and inference.

Science knowledge is based on data derived from direct, or indirect, observations of the natural physical world and often includes measuring something. An inference is a conclusion you draw from observations – the meaning you make from observations. Understanding the difference is an important step towards being scientifically literate. 

Some scientific knowledge behind change

Chemical change:
A chemical change means that it cant go back to original.  Molecules have changed.

Physical change means it can go back.  

Find things in everyday life and decide what it is - chemical or physical?

The concept of change and stability involves these questions:

• how does the system return to stability?
• what kicks it into instability?
• what can we do to effect the change?
• is it a physical change (change return back to stasis)?
• or is it a chemical change (forever changed)?

Looking at a change in:

• temperatures, 
• colour
• heat
• energy
• force
• sound
• molecular states

Planning

Two focuses for  this term:

• play in the sandpit.  Get used to asking scientific questions.  Conduct one-off experiments.
• do a longer study on something that involves change and gathering and interpreting data.  Could be the weather - measure rain gauge. Could look at the students’ growth and change (height) over time.  Could look at shadows at different times of the day over time.

Go to Resources page to find links to resources.

Please post your scientific activities that you're planning or you have done with your class, as a blog post.

Here's our Planning Template.