After having watched this video on the roller coaster physics
lesson, I was very impressed with the teacher, Donna Migdol (Teaching Channel). Her method
of teaching physics, math, engineering, and economics all at once. The
kids got hands on experience building roller coasters for marbles that
cemented in their minds what kinetic and potential energy were, as well
as concepts like momentum and friction. The built a roller coaster in a
group after each person designed their own idea for the project. This
obviously promotes creativity, problem solving, team-work and some
negotiation. On top of that, she had the kids pay for the parts for
their roller coasters with money from their class allowances, which also
taught them budgeting and economic concepts. I really feel like the
whole class was a home run. It was so impressive to watch the fifth
graders discussing the project with such maturity, so obviously their
teacher has been cultivating a positive, can-do attitude from the
beginning of the year.
The teacher in this class has high
expectations for her students and its clear that the students have
similar expectations for themselves. The classroom procedures and
orderly and promoting positive student characteristics, like the "chime"
technique where students report back on last weeks efforts, or the
dividing of teams into different roles and cooperation. The procedures
seem natural and automatic, but this just means that the teacher has
putin the work at the beginning of the school year to make sure that
students got into the habits of doing these procedures.
Even
when the students make mistakes, there is no judgment or feeling that
they have failed, so it appears that Ms. Migdol has also taught them
about learning from mistakes and why it's important to make some
mistakes sometimes
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REFERENCES:
"Roller Coaster Physics: STEM in Action." Teaching Channel. Accessed: Apr. 22, 2018. https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-stem-strategies
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