Before my classroom closed about two weeks ago due to Covid19 my class was right in the middle of their Energy Unit of Twig Science. I am one of the teachers that is piloting TWIG SCIENCE for consideration of adopting this program for our district. My students were super excited about it and often I would hear, "our we going to do science today?" They each chose their own group to work with and the parameters were no more than 5 in a group and they had to come up with a name and assign roles for everyone in the group. Such as Project Manager or Material Manager.
During the task I was able to snap up some pictures of each of their groups as they were collaborating with the construction of their model cars.
They had to draw a model of a car in their Twig workbooks and they had to decide how they would build the car by following the directions of construction of a basic car. It was wonderful seeing them all work together as they decided what their team name was going to be and to drawing up some designs.
Each group received a tissue box, two dowels, cardboard and a template for the wheels or they could trace a coffee cup to create the wheels. After following the directions they had to figure out how far apart to put on the wheels, test it out and if they were satisfied brought it to me to hot glue the wheels on the dowels. The next time they went back to see if they wanted to make adjustments and some did and some were satisfied with their models.
Then........we got THE Horrible NEWS that Coronavirus was spreading worldwide and that we were going transition to Online Education. Which is were we are at today. Hopefully we will be able to adapt this lesson to at home learning or finish it when we eventually go back to our life before Covid19.