PlayDoh and Toothpicks and Gummy Bears... OH MY, They're Models!
Abstract
Simple, everyday items found around the house are often used in geoscience lab activities. Gummy bears and silly putty can model the bending and breaking behaviour of rocks; shaking buildings during an earthquake can be modeled with some Jello, toothpicks, and marshmallows; PlayDoh can be used to demonstrate layers of sedimentary rocks; and even plumbing pipes filled with pebbles and playground sand become miniature physical models of aquifers. When performed correctly, these activities can help students visualize geoscience phenomena or increase students' motivation to pay attention in class, but how do these activities help students develop ways to think like a scientist? "Developing and using models" is one of the important science and engineering practices recommended in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In this presentation, we will demonstrate a variety of common geoscience lab activities using simple, everyday household items in order to describe ways instructors can help their students develop model-based reasoning skills. Specific areas of interest will be on identifying positive and negative attributes of a model, ways to evaluate the reliability of a model, and how a model can be revised to improve its outcome. We will also outline other kinds of models that can be generated from these lab activities, such as mathematical, graphical, and verbal models. Our goal is to encourage educators to focus more time on helping students develop model-based reasoning skills, which can be used in almost all aspects of everyday life.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMED21B0289K
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATION;
- 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATION