AboutPeopleSearch»

Working with science ideas

Throughout this unit of instruction, Brian worked to help students translate between images of sound as a transverse wave and an explanatory model of sound as a compressional wave moving through a medium like air. While the transverse wave representation is often used in order to depict wavelength, frequency, and amplitude, Brian is concerned that transverse wave images fail to help students understand the actual behavior of sound waves in a medium like air. 

Scientific Method focus
Teacher asks students to identify variables and describe the experimental set-up. Science concepts are played down to afford time to talk about designing experiments. Talk with students is about error and validity.

Discovering or Confirming Science Ideas
Teacher has students discovering science concepts for themselves (without much background ahead of time) OR Teacher has students use an activity as a “proof of concept.” Does not include hypothesizing about these observations and descriptions.

Hypothesizing about observations and descriptions
Teacher asks students to predict what they will observe happen in the investigation. Focus is on describing how variables change outcomes. 

Forwarding science ideas to work on
Teacher foregrounds key science concepts and asks students to use an investigation to make sense of the concepts. Focus is on sense making between data and developing science concepts.

Epistemic Fluency/ MBI focus
Teacher set up for inquiry and data collection is purposeful and highlights tentative explanatory models as the basis for investigation and data collection. Teacher uses model as a touching point before, during and after an inquiry and strategically builds in background knowledge of key scienceideas and models before, during and following an inquiry.

By developing a model of sound as energy waves passing through the collisions and compressions of particles in air, Brian provided a solid conceptual foundation for students to explain how sound works in general, and to explain specific features of sounds like pitch and volume (see continuum above). figureIn addition, Brian worked to help students develop a model of sound energy transferring in all directions from a point of origin rather than traveling directly from the point of origin to the listener. This model of sound energy traveling in three dimensions will be important in later units of study when students work to understand phenomena like echoes and the Doppler Effect.