Measurement

After we picked out all the seeds from the pumpkin yesterday I took them home to clean up a little bit. I brought them back this morning and I was showing them to a very kind EA who works in our room. Her and I started to wonder how many seeds were collected from the huge pumpkin. I estimated maybe around 300 and she thought maybe closer to 400 but neither of us were sure. We couldn’t help ourselves- soon we were twenty minutes away from the bell and we were desperate to find out how many seeds! We counted in groups of 10 and found that there were 551 seeds!

551 seeds all came out of this big pumpkin.

When I did the measuring activity with the children, I told them all about how Mrs. EA and I had spent our morning. I was so glad that her and I had that moment together this morning to let ourselves be curious and use that kind of inquiry mindset. Being able to refer back to our process really helped me in explaining and guiding the lesson for the students and I think it added another level of engagement for them.

1. Asking a question (how many seeds were in this pumpkin?)

2. Making a hypothesis (A guess we thought might come true)

3. Testing our hypothesis (Counting the seeds, see what happens)

4. Making a conclusion (finding out)

5. Recording our observations (writing it down)

I scaffolded this whole process for students in small groups at a time for our measurement. First we asked our question (how many blocks tall is this pumpkin or gourd?). Then we made observations so we could guess how many blocks we might need. Then we tested it out with the blocks we had. We found out how many blocks we needed. The students reported how many blocks they needed to me and I reordered our observations!

The students in this class love being scientists!