Fantastic First Week

Welcome to our Fourth Grade classroom.  We have had an amazing first week full of fun activities.  We spent some time getting to know each other through game play on the first day.  Then we talked about how we liked to be treated by others around us and how we should treat others.  We developed our classroom social contract.  Finally, we began to dig in to the content of what our science classroom would use as its foundation - problem solving.   Each team had the same materials - a small plastic cup (which served as the "boat"), a gummy lifesaver (which served as a "life jacket"), four paper clips, and a gummy worm (which served as our main character, "Fred").  We started out with the following scenario:  Fred (the gummy worm) was sailing along in the sea, when the wind picked up and capsized his boat.  Fred managed to climb on top of the upside-down boat, but his life jacket was trapped beneath the boat - Poor Fred!

 As a team, students had to figure out how to remove the life jacket from underneath the boat, and place it firmly around Fred without using anything but their four paper clips.  They came up with many great ideas.

 They manipulated the paper clips to make hooks to lift Fred off the cup.  Most groups stretched the life jacket using the paper clips.  Some groups even made tweezers out of their paper clips.  They pushed and pulled Fred.

More than once, Fred landed back in the sea and "died."

 Even though they used different techniques, every single group had success.

This group managed to solve the problem in a very short amount of time.  When we met together after the investigation, they told me that their strategy was to discuss their plan before they ever touched any of the materials. 

 After we finished the investigation, we talked about the limitations of the scenario.  Students listed several things, including the lack of materials, the difficulty of not being able to touch Fred or the other materials with their hands, and the gummy pieces getting too sticky after being manipulated.  Surprisingly, everyone worked together and communicated as a team.  Several times I heard, "This is hard," but no one gave up! In the end, students learned that working together and listening to every idea is a very important part of problem solving.  I am very proud of their hard work.  This is going to be a great year in science!