Investigate the Laws of Fluids

The author, a 7th grade science teacher, believes that “student exploration changes misconceptions, promotes interest, motivates learners, and alters attitudes.” With that in mind, she deve... See More

The author, a 7th grade science teacher, believes that “student exploration changes misconceptions, promotes interest, motivates learners, and alters attitudes.” With that in mind, she developed a unit on the laws of fluids to help her students build an understanding of the discoveries of Bernoulli, Charles, and Boyle. She began with four Mini-learning cycles to discover conditions that affect air pressure. There was an exploration phase, an invention phase, application phase, and the reflections phase. She defines what the “learning cycle” that she uses consists of, the connection to the standards, and provides examples of activities for the exploration and application phases. All areas of her four phases are well written and can easily be followed. The materials needed for the activities are both inexpensive and easily found; I highly recommend this article to all teachers needing/wanting excellent conceptual development activities to create a unit on the laws of fluids.

Straws and Air Pressure

This is a fascinating article that provides activities and explanations in a way middle school students come away understanding air pressure and how it works. The activities are sequenced a... See More

This is a fascinating article that provides activities and explanations in a way middle school students come away understanding air pressure and how it works. The activities are sequenced and scaffolded in a way all students can be successful individually and as part of a group. For many, this is a discrepant event that hooks them on learning more about the complexities of Science.