• Replies 3 replies
  • Subscribers 6 subscribers
  • Views 729 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Hands-on activities for first thresholds

Laura Massa

My students enjoy demonstrations and hands-on activities. The first thresholds give them the opportunity to internalize some of the concepts they learn. One of the most clarifying activities to conceptualize the process of inflation of our universe was the Big Bang Balloon activity.  For the second threshold they sorted the planet cards explaining why they placed them in that order and what happened in each instance of the star and proplyd formation. Most of my students had a lot of fun performing the accretion process, an activity that is still remembered as seniors. Others had joy in the football field when we represented the solar system on scale, after watching one of the best videos on the topic. Yesterday we concluded the unit with a demonstration on seafloor spreading and plate tectonics.

How do you approach these first theresholds with your students? Do you include hands-on activities? If so which ones?

           

  • Laura I am so glad you made this post! I have been making it my mission to do all of the hands on activities BHP has to offer this year- especially the ones I have not done before. I plan on doing the Big Bang Balloon activity at the end of the week. Just ordered my balloons and sharpies. I am excited to try it out! I am wondering if you have any advice on how to wrap the activity up at the end of the period? 

    I love these hands on activities but sometimes struggle setting aside a good 10 or so minutes to have a meaningful "what was the point of this" talk back with my students. I want to make sure I leave time for this debrief after the activity. 

      

  • in reply to Adriane Musacchio

     I completely understand your position. Sometimes we don't have the time to do hands-on activities so in that case I adapt them to simplify the process. For example, for the balloon activity I made some changes to streamline the process, used analogies, and came up with an activity that served the purpose. I think it is very important to debrief and ask students why we did that activity and what they learned from it. For kinesthetic students these activities work wonderfully and for all students in general because they can internalize concepts when they visualize or simulate them. They will remember the concepts (for example, accretion) therefore it is easier to build up complexity because they have a foundation of understanding and whatever they read about or you explain in class is relatable. 

    I wish you success with these activities.

  • in reply to Laura Massa

    Thank you! Decided I will try the balloon activity out this upcoming Tuesday! This will be happening after my students learned about Leavitt, Hubble, and Dr. Wu. I fell in love with the new Dr. Wu graphic bio about the "left handed universe" and will be doing that tomorrow. 

    I am hoping that the balloon activity will be a nice "ah-ha" and visual learning opportunity for students next week. I think that front loading the context about our expanding universe might help this activity go smoothly. I did mention in class that we would be doing the balloon activity soon and the very idea of using balloons to learn excited everyone. 

    I think it will be valuable for all the reasons you just shared- once students have the foundational understanding and can visualize what our expanding universe looks like over time, we can layer on the complexity.