Aspects Which Foster Learning about Sound

Today’s class began with Emily and me introducing ourselves. Emily also introduced the course to the students, two of whom have already taken Physics 111 from Emily. The first thing that we had the students do was think of instances in their past when they learned something about sound. They each drew several pictures of those memories on posters and wrote down a few words that they remembered having to do with the topic of sound. After they had all completed their posters, I asked the students to think about what aspects helped foster their learning, in other words, what helped them learn what they had learned. I had some trouble getting them to share their thoughts, so I asked them to discuss some things with their partner (using the think-pair-share method). Afterwards, the students generated a wonderful list of aspects which helped them learn about sound. Some of the things on their list included:
• Experiencing the phenomena for yourself
• Expert visitors
• Combining literacy and science
• Free choice learning
• Observations
• OMSI/Gilbert House Field Trips
• Small group explorations
• Learning Stations
• Hands on learning
• Magic School Bus/Bill Nye the Science Guy
• Sharing questions