Yesterday I had a fantastic day. I even got shivers a couple of times when I felt that cosmic connection between a meaningful concept and student understanding. The meaningful concept was related to Einstein's quote, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." Students were staring in wonder as they tried to reflect on how the 2 kg mass of water and cells they call a brain could make sense of everything from ideas about the Big Bang to their feelings about Justin Bieber.
Today 8th graders tried to figure out what affects the rate of swing of a pendulum. I gave them 4 variables to test: length of string, mass on end of string, height you drop the mass from, and if you give the mass a push or not. They made a hypothesis and away they went. No help. They had to come up with a data table that would present a valid organization of data from which to draw a conclusion. They struggled, but a few worked it out. .
Next week we look at cognitive development and Piaget. They will use some of Piaget's tasks (conservation of mass, number, and volume) to test pre-school kids' levels of cognitive development. I'll relate the pre-schoolers' inability to understand the seemingly obvious and simple conservation tasks (You can find loads of examples on You Tube.) with their struggles to work out how to organize an experiment on what affects the rate of swing of a pendulum, a Piaget test for formal operations. Many will gain a nice understanding that their brain and how they think is changing and that they possibly don't understand everything quite yet.
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