Where We Are in Place and Time- Analysing Evidence

Students in grade 5 have been busy investigating ancient civilisations and plotting major events on a timeline.  Through research, students discovered that the Egyptian pyramids were built about 4,500 years ago, farming in the fertile crescent began around 12,000 years ago, and pottery has been around at least 20,000 years.  This led students to wonder:

 “If the first written languages didn’t arise until 5,000 years ago, how do we know the age of things older than that?”

This was the perfect time to dive deeper into our 3rd line of inquiry: Processes involved in collecting, analysing and validating evidence.

Students were led through a series of activities to explore how scientist date artefacts.

The first step involved students recalling what they learned from a previous inquiry into properties of matter. Students recalled some basic information about the periodic chart and the structure of atoms. 

In the first activity, students learned about carbon-14 dating.  As a class, we watched a segment of the documentary, Hunting the Elements (link here, 22:30) in which scientists explain how they use the radioactive isotope of carbon-14 to help find the age of fossils and artefacts.  Students then broke into groups to watch a brain pop video and define some key terms. 

Students watch videos and define key vocabulary

After getting a better understanding of how carbon-14 dating works, students set out to explore the concept of a half-life. Students used M&Ms to help with this.  On an M&M, there is a small ‘M’ on one side of the candy.  This was used to show a carbon-14 atom. After starting with a known number of M&Ms (Carbon-14 atoms) students shook them up and dumped them onto a plate, some of the M&Ms would appear with ‘M’ side up others with the ‘M’ side down.  If the ‘M’ was not showing, this would indicate that the radioactive carbon-14 atom had decayed and turned into something else.  

Here is Rosa explaining how Carbon-14 dating works.

Students carried this out for 5 rounds. Afterwards, we found the average of all the groups.  We knew that about half should decay each round, but also knew that not every group would have exactly half each round.  Here we explored the idea of sample size- that with enough trials we would move closer and closer to the statistical result of exactly half. 

Exploring half-life with M&Ms

Firmly secure in their understanding of half-life, students began creating a graph of carbon-14’s half-life.  The graph can then be used to find the age of a fossil or artefact.  The only information needed to construct the graph is the starting number of carbon-14 atoms  in the artefact (at age 0), the remaining number of carbon-14 atom in the artefact, and the half-life of carbon-14 (5,700 years). 

In this example, the sample contained 48 Carbon-14 atoms (M side up) at the start. After a certain amount of time, some have decayed and no longer have an M. 27 atoms have decayed and only 21 Carbon-14 atoms remain.

Using this Carbon-14 half-life graph, students can plot the data along the curve. If 21 Carbon-14 atoms are remaining, that means the sample is 7,500 years old.

With all this knowledge, students were ready to take the next step and apply these skills to actually dating a fossil. 

Very simply, students were given a fossil of a bone and asked to find out how old it was.

An elaborate story was told of finding a small pyramid in the park, exploring it, uncovering an ancient burial ground inside, removing the bones, and bringing them to school for students to analyse.  More or less, nobody believed this story and quickly realised that the 'bones' were actually baked dough with grains of rice inside.  In this case, the rice represented carbon-14 atoms.  

To find out the age of the bone, students meticulously picked through the sample to find out how many Carbon-14 atoms were remaining. By finding out how many were remaining, they were able to determine how many had decayed from the original sample. They were then able to plot this information on a half-life graph and determine the age of the fossil.

Here are the young archaeologists hard at work.

BIG SCIENCE DAY

Friday, March 10 is Big Science Day here at Seisen. Students across the school-from kindergarten to high school- will participate in demonstrations, activities, and present their independent science investigations. The culminating event will be a presentation by Akiko Nakamura from Kobe University. Ms Nakamura is a well know scientist in Japan who studies the formation and evolution of planetary bodies. There is even an asteroid named after her!

Grade 5 will host its own Big Science Day for parents and elementary students on Friday morning.

Here they are getting ready.

Students will focus their independent investigations on testing the properties of matter.

Students will:
Formulate a testable question
Make a prediction using scientific language and concepts studied
Decide what variable will be tested
Decide what will be measured and recorded
Draw conclusions based on the evidence gathered
Make a connection between the experiment and real world applications

You won't want to miss this.  Doors open at 9:00. Admission is free!

Integrating Maths into the Unit of Inquiry

As the grade 5 move into the How The World Works unit of inquiry and begin to investigate properties of matter, it seemed like a natural fit to start a mathematics unit on measurement.

During their first trip to the science lab, with the help of Mr. Johnson, the lab technician, students set about to investigate the question, 

"Does mass change as a material goes through a phase change?” 

Students carefully measured the mass of a beaker with ice and sent the ice through a phase change using a hot plate. When the ice was melted, students remeasured the mass to find if their was any difference.  

After completing the first investigation, students reflected on their results. Many students were surprised to find that the mass of the water was less than the mass of the ice. It seemed the answer to the question was, "Yes, mass is lost during a phase change." Upon further reflection, many students wondered if their measurements were accurate enough. Perhaps there is a way to get more reliable results? Students then designed another experiment with more variables controlled and a more precise method of measuring the mass of the water- in all its phases.


Most groups concluded that some of the water was being lost as a vapour so they were unable to measure its mass. Students know that one property of a gas is that it wants to spread out and fill the open space. Groups came up with a variety of ways to trap the gas so it could be measured along with the liquid water.  In Rosa and Limie's experiment, they used a balloon on top of a beaker to trap the gas. Based on their results, a tiny bit of gas may have escaped. They found a difference in mass of 0.2 grams. Not bad for only the 2nd try.

Here is Jian, Tanatswa and Sunaina talking about their investigation.

In addition, students did a bit of research into this topic on the conservation of mass. We watched a short- yet very dramatic- video about Antoine Lavoisier. Widely considered the father of modern chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier is credited with proving the conservation of mass. Students were surprised to learn he did over 1,000 experiments before he was confident his measurements were correct. We're hoping 2 is enough for us! 
Click here to watch the dramatic video. 

Besides the practical application of measurement through science investigations, students are also working on measuring the different attributes of shapes and events- specifically perimeter, area and volume.

After spending some time constructing a definition of area and perimeter, and developing a method for calculating the area and perimeter, students were given the following 2 questions to investigate:

Students worked out the answer in a variety ways and explained the thinking and process in their notebooks. However, being scientists, we need proof!

Method 1                                                                Method 2     

After working individually and conferring with a few partners, students reflected on this activity by consulting their deep mathematical thinking checklist in their notebooks. As a class, we have been exploring the concept of growth mindset and what that looks like in a maths class. We came to the conclusion that getting the correct answer isn't nearly as important as testing out ideas, persevering, making connections to previous learning, and defending your position-to name just a few. As class we decided which of these attributes we were using while investigating these questions. 

For an overview of growth mindset, the science of learning math, the importance of perseverance, the multiple ways to 'see' math, visit the youcubed.org website. This comes from the research of Jo Boaler from Stanford University. It is filled with great information for parents, students, and teachers.

Week in Review

Readers’ Workshop

Students in 5B have a begun reading a class novel, Esperanza Rising. Although all students are reading the same book, we have broken up into smaller groups to work on different skills and strategies while we read and respond to what we read.  After reading, students are responsible for completing one of the following tasks: analyzing Esperanza’s character, creating high quality discussion questions in regards to the chapter, visualizing an important event, writing a summary, finding an important quote from the chapter, and researching the historical event from the chapter. In addition, using clues from the texts, everyone records their predictions on what they think will happen later in the story.

Students working on the various tasks after reading

Some students read along to an audiobook, some read orally in a group, some read in pairs, and one reads individually

Our working board. Students translated key proverbs from the story into their native languages. Can you recognise any of these languages or sayings?

Mathematics

Central Idea:

Patterns can often be generalized using algebraic expressions, equations or functions.

Students started with a tuning in game to help construct meaning around this idea. Students were given 7 two-sided chips. The goal is to flip all the chips so the other colour is showing. However, you must flip exactly 3 chips at a time.  What is the least number of rounds it takes to have all chips flipped? 

Students experiment with finding patterns

After experimenting and playing with possibilities, students came to the conclusion that 3 rounds was the least possible number of rounds.  Students then continued this challenge with 8 chips, 9 chips, etc...  Students began to record their results in a function table and were asked to look for patterns and try to predict what is the least number of rounds needed for 16 chips? 100 chips?

Students begin to organise their results in a function table which will help to see the pattern

Students use the function table to see and explain the pattern. The next step is to express the pattern mathematically-in an algebraic equation

Unit of Inquiry

How we Organize Ourselves is coming to an end and students are applying their learning and going further in their inquires. 

As a class we played a game to investigate our second line of inquiry, food production and distribution. Specifically, we looked at the challenges subsistence farmers face as they try to grow enough food for their families as well produce a small surplus to sell. 

Students were organized into small groups of farming families.  Each season, students must produce enough corn for their families’ to eat. Any surplus food could be sold to the global market for a small price. In addition, farmers can choose to harvest coffee fruit. However, to sell coffee to the global market farmers must first process the fruit and package it, and purchase an expensive export license. 

Students work hard to harvest their crops and sell the surplus so they can buy fertilisers or possible an export license

After this activity, students reflected where on the SOLO Taxonomy this fit. Some students classified it as a level 4 Connecting Ideas activity. They noted that they were comparing different strategies and explaining the effects of their actions.  Some thought it was a level 5 Going Further activity as they were planning a strategy, reflecting on its success and revising and improving on it in later rounds.

Students highlighted the thinking skills they used during the activity

Mei and Jeong Yeon take action to Go Further in their learning by designing an experiment to test organic and conventional fruit. They were curious to know if their was any difference in taste or quality. The results were surprising! They will write up a full lab report over the weekend and share it with the class next week. We are all looking forward to it.

Students perform a test to see if they can taste the difference between an organic banana and a conventional banana.
What is your hypothesis?

Science in the PYP

Grade 5 have spent the past few weeks investigating the different ways food is produced around the world. After learning about the key characteristics of each mode of production, students shifted their focus to issues of sustainability. Although students had a general idea of what sustainable meant, we pushed our understanding to include what is known as the 3 pillars of sustainability- the economic, social, and environmental impact. The following 2 images were used to help unpack this idea.       

                           

Students were then given 16 characteristics of food production that were previously investigated and asked to place them on a continuum from very sustainable to non-sustainable. Students worked in pairs to share their ideas and build their continuum. A lot of interesting discussions took place around the idea of balancing social justice, economic prosperity and environmental damage. 

We came together as a class to discuss where on the continuum the prompt "Using fertiliser to increase yields" should be placed. Once again, a lively debate ensued with students pointing out the social and economic benefit of increased yields, especially for struggling populations, but at the same time, noting the environmental damage caused by fertiliser. Here are a few students discussing this topic.


This led to the question, 

" Does fertiliser damage the environment?
If so, how"

It was the perfect time to bring science into our inquiry. 

Students were shown the following image and were told the red dots represented Dead Zones. These are places were fish cannot live. We used this as a provocation and a starting point of our investigation. With the help of Se-Eun's explanation, the class looked at the Mississippi river network in the United States and the surrounding farmland. Students noted that applying fertiliser to big farms by crop-dusters, or erosion from rainfall can lead to fertiliser ending up in the river network and eventually draining into the sea. 

The red circles are places that experience Dead Zones-area with low oxygen levels that can't support marine life. As you can see they are in costal regions with dense populations. What causes these Dead Zones? Students will investigate.

An experiment was set up to see what might happen to coastal regions if excessive fertiliser entered the water, and how dead zones form.

For our experiment, 3 beakers were set up per group. One was a control with regular tap water in it, one had lake water, and one had lake water with fertiliser added to it. Each day students will observe the jars and measure the amount of oxygen in the water using a Vernier Dissolved Oxygen Probe.

Unfortunately, the fertilizer we used was blue. I hope we can still see any algae growth that might happen.

Using the probe to measure the amount of oxygen in the water.

Stayed tuned to see the results of this experiment. We think it will take about 2 weeks for the fertiliser to cause an algae bloom, the bloom to die, and the decomposition process to use up all the oxygen in the water.  What was once the lovely water of Senzoku Ike will become a hypoxic dead zone, incapable of supporting marine life. In the meantime, enjoy a nice photo of Senzoku Ike at sundown, before its demise.

       Students grapple with the very real question of how do we feed our growing population, protect the beauty of our planet, and provide a fair, equitable life for all?