Mass, Volume and Weight

First grade students explore the topic of living vs nonliving concepts starting with the right questions. These questions lead the authors to realize that some children had misconceptions a... See More

First grade students explore the topic of living vs nonliving concepts starting with the right questions. These questions lead the authors to realize that some children had misconceptions about this topic. This article provides a simple rubric that can be used for classification of living vs nonliving. After further exploration of student understands the classification was expanded to living, nonliving and dead with students justifying their choices.

DensityThrows More Than Its Weight Around

The authors of this article design activities to help students overcome their misconceptions about density. Students are actively engaged in a 3-day immersion where they investigate materia... See More

The authors of this article design activities to help students overcome their misconceptions about density. Students are actively engaged in a 3-day immersion where they investigate materials with varying masses and volumes to confront their conceptions about how the volumes and masses of substances are used to determine their densities. A performance assessment is provided where students are asked to determine the densities of several unknowns. Students are able to discover that it is the ratio of mass to volume that determines a material’s density, and that it is not the amount of a substance that determines its density. Added bonuses to these lessons include lots of practice taking accurate measurements and integration of writing and math skills through the use of interactive science notebooks.