Earlier this week the students and I decided to begin working on Phase 2 for our Project Rocket Ship. Phase 2 involves adding pencils to the outsides of the rockets to act as stabilizers. The students began by cutting packing tape and trying to tape the pencils onto the sides of each of the rockets. They realized that it was extremely difficult trying to stick the pencils on by themselves, so they began asking each other for help and working together in groups of two. As the project progressed, we all came to the conclusion that the packing tape was not working. It wasn't allowing the pencils to stay on the sides of the ships. The kids thought we should try to use a different kind of tape, so we also gave scotch tape a try. After everyone made several attempts to make the new tape work, the students found that the same issues were happening with the scotch tape. As a group, the students and I concluded that we should wait to try again until we had a stronger kind of tape to work with. All of this trial and error work made me think about a book we read regularly at school called 11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill. The book is about a little girl who tries 11 various experiments that never work out quite right, but she logs the results of every single one regardless of the outcome. The children and I talked about the value of trial and error and how finding out that an experiment (or anything else for that matter) didn't have the results you were hoping for can still teach you information you didn't know before and help you get closer to the right results the next time. After this discussion some of the students that started the process of Phase 2 decided they wanted to tell me their interpretations of what happened just like the main character in the experiment book. Please enjoy the pictures and the interpretations of the results from some of the students of our first attempt at Phase 2.
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AuthorHi there! My name is Dawn Irwin and I've been a teacher here at Stepping Stones since August 2011. I love our school, I am passionate about our approach to learning, and am proud of all of our students for all that they accomplish each and every day! Archives
August 2017
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