Exploring Sounds

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Sound Activities

The students learned about the properties of sound by exploring some common items. Using a decibel meter, the students recorded the various sound readings of objects around the classroom. They also recorded observations they made about those items and they generated some powerful ideas about sound.

Michele, one of the instructors, probed the students thinking about sound. She first had them listen to a recorded sound on her cell phone, and then draw what they heard. The students all had very unique and creative ways of representing the sound. Michele asked the students about why they drew the sound representations the way they did, and she got them wondering if their diagrams could be applied to other sounds. After playing around a bit more, Michele introduced the more standard ways of representing sound. In addition, she taught the students sound vocabulary that they could apply to their discussions about sound during further explorations.