Coaster Creations Continued...

Our coaster creations continue in the sixth grade!  I was very proud of my students last week with all of the amazing coaster designs that they were able to come up with.  It was one of the best weeks I've had in my teaching career.  I love teaching science for those rare moments when students don't even realize how much they are learning because they are having so much fun!  However, like everything else in the world of education, it could use a few tweeks for next year.

Coaster Creation Lab

Pros

• Very inexpensive 
• excellent lab to use with groups; also worked excellent with my inclusion class and students with disabilities
• video taping- students loved this, and it allowed them to identify design errors
• labeling the actual coasters with potential and kinetic energy
• discussing potential and kinetic energy (and completing interactive notes) before beginning coaster designs

Cons

• need. more. time.  We only have 40 minute periods so students had to rebuild their coasters the second day which wasted A LOT of time.  I am kicking around the idea of buying a lot more pipe insulation for next year and then using an empty space where groups can leave their coasters set up for day 2.
• A few groups got carried away with their designs at first and had a very hard time correcting all of their mistakes in order to create a successful coaster.  I was able to help most of the groups get on the right track, but a few of them slipped past me at first and then struggled toward the end.

This week, we are working in teams of 2 using the BrainPop Coaster Creator activity.  It is also our OAA testing week, so I thought using the coaster creator would be great this week because the students are usually fried after the test and it is very hard to keep them interested.  However, they love BrainPop and they love anything that they perceive to be a "game".

In this activity, students get to design a coaster.  They get to choose everything from the shape, color and number of cars, to the coaster's track.

After creating their designs, students can play a simulation of their coasters in which it either succeeds, gets stuck or crashes  They can go back to the design process and tweak their coasters as many times as necessary.

 Additionally, they get a final score for their design based on the coaster's difficulty, which I of course turned into a challenge for them to see who can get the best score.

So far, they are loving this!  What I love about it is that the activity includes fun aspects of the design process for the students, but it also shows the formulas for kinetic and potential energy, and the transfer between the two throughout the coaster, so students can see where their coaster was gaining and/ or losing energy.

We also used an app on the Ipads last week called Coaster.  I believe it is $0.99, and these two web-sites:

www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/coaster/section1.html

www.funderstanding.com/educators/coaster/rollercoastergame

After having such a great experience with this unit, my head is buzzing with possible ideas for next year.  I am thinking everything from a Physics Day at school to a Physics day at an amusement park.