I explored an article by Clegorne & Mastrogiovanni who discuss the ways in which design thinking might bridge the worlds of science and humanities. In Grade Three, students explore the nature of sound, its sources, qualities and what it is. They learn that sound is vibration and that changes in vibration can affect the loudness, pitch and quality of sound. They learn about sound travel by studying what things carry sound, what things make it louder or softer, and what happens to sound when it reaches their ears.
As a part of this unit, we begin with a problem students may be familiar with: airplane noise because our school’s neighbourhood is on a flight path. We begin and end the unit with the same problem and can see growth in student understanding of how sound travels and how to mitigate harmful noises. A common misconception is that sound can be “blocked” by objects and students often suggest at the beginning of the unit that a good way to deal with the harmful or bothersome noises would be to put steel plates around houses to block out the noise.
As we explore sound, we integrate digital tools to counter misconceptions: a decibel meter such as the one available on itunes and twisted wave, an online audio editor that allows users to manipulate sound and view the effects of different kinds of sounds on the sound waves. For example, students might be asked to speak in a high or low pitch and to vary the loudness of the sound produced. Following this, I ask students to create a podcast studio using the design thinking process and to test which materials are best at creating the ideal quiet studio and explore why those materials might work well. They are encouraged to go through multiple iterations as they hypothesize, test, and evaluate various materials. At the end of the unit, students are asked to return to the original question about the effects of being on a flight path and how to mitigate the sounds. Almost all students recommend soft materials inside the home over steel plates. The airport problem provides students with the opportunity to extend their understanding beyond the science concepts alone and into real-world applications.
Clegorne, N., & Mastrogiovanni, J. (2015). Designing alternatives: Design thinking as a mediating learning strategy to bridge science and the humanities for leadership learning. The Journal of Leadership Education, 14(4), 46-54.
Khan, S. (2010). New pedagogies for teaching with computer simulations. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 20(3), 215-232.
Dear Tracy,
I like that you ask students to assess visual representation of information about sound. Your example is also authentic and practical. I also like that students demonstrate their understanding with a podcast.
Perhaps, this inquiry can turn into a maker-centred project. Students can design a sound proof house that is near the flight paths. Additionally, the Science Journal app may be helpful to this units (https://makingscience.withgoogle.com/science-journal/). Students can design experiments to test their assumptions about sound.
Alice
Thanks for this resource Alice!!
Great resource! Thank you for sharing! I like the idea of pushing this unit of study to the next level.
Hey Tracy!
You chose a topic that students of even university/college level find tricky (sound waves) so I appreciate you tackling it early and with meaningful support from technology! I think having students speak in different pitches and volumes with help from a sound meter could go a long way for students to make a personal connection to the topic. I am interested to see what effect building the studio has on student understanding and misconceptions. Do you think that it helped them to quash their view that sound can be “blocked”? And if so, what is their new conception? Do they realize things like it is actually “absorbed” or “reflected”, or do they realize something else entirely?
I feel like this is a really nice activity or, more specifically, “TELE”, as the technology clearly works to enhance the content. To me it seems to touch on a lot of what makes the LfU framework so powerful — students can clearly see why the concepts are being taught being they are being applied in-context all the while.
I did have a little more trouble determining what sections of your activity were “Generate”, “Evaluate” and “Modify”. Were they generating, evaluating, and modifying ideas/hypotheses/relationships about the properties of sound, or the materials that sound travels through?
All in all a very nice set of ideas for an activity… I hope you don’t mind if I steal those apps for potential future use in my college physics classes!! 😀
-Scott
Thanks, Scott. I find that it’s a tricky unit of study for my learners! I have found this class enormously useful in that I am now seeking to understand student conceptions related to science and math rather than correct and incorrect answers. It’s kind of embarassing that it took this long in my career to understand that that’s what was needed to help students make sense of math and science. As I started this work with a pre-assessment, I understood that students thought sound could be “blocked”. We haven’t yet done the post-assessment, so I am hopeful that their conceptions about how sound travels will be modified. They can identify that soft materials work better but I’m not sure they understand why.
Thanks, also for asking me to clarify the GEM steps in the unit of study. I think:
Generate: hypotheses around the nature of sound
Evaluate: through observation of how sound is modified by various materials hypothesize why this is so
Modify: articulate understanding of the nature of sound based on observations of how it is modified
I always like to relate it to squishy objects. Generally speaking, squishy objects have more room between molecules, or are more easily displaced, meaning that they tend to absorb kinetic energy (energy of motion) easier than hard/solid objects. Sound is a wave, which is really just energy, so as that energy bounces around and gets redistributed to move squishy objects it loses its volume, eventually going to zero. I find it really interesting to teach (I teach it differently every time haha) and I always find it fascinating to see what (mis)conceptions students have!! Like circuits, it’s a topic I think students struggle with in so small part due to it being an essentially invisible process!
Thanks for your elaboration for the GEM cycle!!
-Scott