The Ultimate Fizz

After reading this article by Mary Hecksher, I was curious how some of these activities would work with my daycare students. It would be nice to test them out before I am in the full swing o... See More

After reading this article by Mary Hecksher, I was curious how some of these activities would work with my daycare students. It would be nice to test them out before I am in the full swing of teaching. This artile encouraged students to push themselves further and think outside of the box! Also, this article is a great tool for teachers because it gives detailed instructions, an activity, a table to record date, and discussion questions for the class to talk about! This is a good tool to use when teaching your students about physical science.

The Ultimate Fizz Review

I was interested in reviewing one resource I had came acrossed called The Ultimate Fizz by: Mary Heckscher. This was a lesson planned for fifth graders so they could explore the baking soda ... See More

I was interested in reviewing one resource I had came acrossed called The Ultimate Fizz by: Mary Heckscher. This was a lesson planned for fifth graders so they could explore the baking soda and vinegar reaction and practice their graphing and measurement skills. In the beginning of this journal article, the author really explains why she chose to conduct this lesson the way she has. She also explains what knowledge students should have before doing this lesson, which I believe is extremely important. I think it is awesome that students have the opportunity to not only see a chemical change but they are creating the ultimate fizz. In doing so, students have to determine what amount of vinegar they need to add to baking soda to create the ultimate fizz without having any baking soda left over. This allows students to analyze, collaborate, and critically think about what they should do to get this result. I really liked the instructions she wrote out for her students because they are well written with a lot of good detail. I also liked that she had an observation section where she took note of students actions, thoughts, and reactions. I believe this is important for a teacher to take note of because a lot of times these type of notes can be used as a critique for what she may want to change or keep the same for next time she teaches the unit. Students had the opportunity to create a chemical reaction, find these measurements, graph their results, and predict other measurements. Lastly, I loved that the overall format was easy to follow with good subheadings and font size. Since I am a visual learner, I would have liked if there were more visuals to display what students were doing throughout this unit, so I would give this document 4 stars because of that. Overall, I believe this was a well thought out unit, and I believe it is very effective in meeting the common core standards provided at the end of the document.

new take on favorite learning activity

Who doesn't use baking soda and vinegar in their primary science classes? This article describes a new approach to this demo/hands-on activity that engages upper elementary students in solvi... See More

Who doesn't use baking soda and vinegar in their primary science classes? This article describes a new approach to this demo/hands-on activity that engages upper elementary students in solving a meaningful question about how to maximize the fizz. Mathematics, and specifically graphical analysis, is well integrated into the activity. Although the article encourages the teacher to engage students in a discussion of the value of compiling and comparing data collected by different scientists, it suggests that human error is the only reason for discrepancies in data.