Grade 5 Science: Simple Machines

We started our “Simple Machine” unit today and I’am very excited to say that this is going to be a very engaging unit!  As I explained the new unit I could see that the students were very excited.

I gave the student an open task to see what they could do. Like in Math, I like to give them an explore so I can see where I need to bring them next. Before I let them go off in their teams, we discussed what I was looking for…

While they work in teams

1. Problem Solving,

2. Team Work,

3. And the most important…Communication (In French)

And as a final product (The report)

The task at hand was to create a simple machine which would allow a pencil to move at least 50 cm, but no more than 60 cm. As the teams began working, I moved from group to group and gave them the vocabulary they needed in French in an authentic way while asking them questions.

Here are just a few examples of some pretty creative work by the 5^th graders.

I told them they could use whatever they found in the classroom.

This group wanted to increase the pencil’s mobility by placing it in a “wheel”.

At this point we are not “labelling” any parts of the machine.  The task is simply to explore and begin acquiring some of the needed vocabulary.

 

This group created a “projectile” pencil machine…

They were beyond excited!

We had to talk about safety…

I blocked off an area of the class for them to work and test their machines. They were very engaged and couldn’t wait to share their results and video tape their machine.

 

 

This group was very proud of their machine.  It took many trials and errors to get it to work just right! This machine is no longer a “simple machine”, but again it’s simply an explore for students. We will get to the actual terminology throughout the unit.