Observing Changes Over Time Folded Organizer
Last year I tried to do an observation calendar with my kids using an accordion fold to paste in the months of the school year. I sent home this Educreations video with my students so that they could make the calendar at home as part of my flipped classroom lesson. Actually this was suppose to be a daily lesson activity, maybe a bell ringer. As 5th graders that were going to take the 5th Grade Science STAAR exam, I wanted them to be able to see and track patterns as part of Supporting Standard 4.8C: collect and analyze data to identify sequences and predict patterns of change in shadows, tides, seasons, and the observable appearance of the Moon over time.
So I decided to have the kids do this calendar and I broke the kids into groups some of them tracking shadows, tides, moon and weather patterns (rainfall.) At first I wanted each group to track their assigned pattern for a month and then switch, but I realized quite quickly that we were going to run into some problems.
I liked this idea and I want to try it again this year but I think I need to find stable resources for my students to draw their data from, perhaps have the kids record the same information that we collect as a class. I'm not sure. Maybe you have a suggestion. Meanwhile, enjoy my video on how to make this calendar for observing patterns.
So I decided to have the kids do this calendar and I broke the kids into groups some of them tracking shadows, tides, moon and weather patterns (rainfall.) At first I wanted each group to track their assigned pattern for a month and then switch, but I realized quite quickly that we were going to run into some problems.
- Tracking tides: Well the obvious problem is that we live in the desert so you aren't exactly going to find tide information in the local newspaper. I had to research tide information from Corpus Christi or Galveston News. The site I chose bounced the location for tide information to different places so this became a problem because my kids might spend more than 10 minutes for a bell ringer. Bad idea! If you know a good reliable place to find tide information in Texas let me know.
- Weather or average rainfall: Sometimes my students wouldn't catch the weather on one day and would want to research what happened the day before or two days before... Guess what? I guess its an internet rule to erase all previous weather information from the internet. I even wrote to a local news station to see if they could help us with our missing data. They gave us the average rainfall for the month. Not helpful.
- Moon phase: Having the kids go outside and look for the moon is great if the moon is up during their waking hours, but not if moon rise is after 10 PM and don't get me started on when the nights are cloudy and you can't see the moon at all. One kid got wise and looked up the phases for that night, the next night, etc, repeated the pattern and actually started filling in the entire booklet with the moon phases before I could stop him because each calendar was suppose to be focused on a particular pattern.
I liked this idea and I want to try it again this year but I think I need to find stable resources for my students to draw their data from, perhaps have the kids record the same information that we collect as a class. I'm not sure. Maybe you have a suggestion. Meanwhile, enjoy my video on how to make this calendar for observing patterns.