Sticky Atoms - Marshmallow Madness

It was a wonderfully sweet smell in my room today. I think in total we used over 7 bags of marshmallows – Big and Small – Colored and White.... I was prepared for the “can we eat them” and “oh why not” but I was not prepared for the volume of tooth picks we used nor the shear “how do I do this”. For such a fun creative just about anything goes activity, there was a lot of “what next Ms. Y” today. I did not expect to need to “hold their hand” so much. It turned out to work alright and once a few students started making progress other’s quickly caught on. I am a firm believer in not providing too much of a model or all they do is copy the model without being creative or thinking on their own.

Some other challenges were 1) how to store the partially completed atoms (space is very limited in my room) and 2) the fairness of who got what element to make their atom of. Improvising with old unused large waxy papered envelopes from yearbook helped with storage. As for balancing easy (small atomic number) vs hard (larger atomic numbers) it came to teacher discretion. Some needed “selling” on why they had such a large atomic number. For others they were happy to have the challenge. It was good for the IEP and ELL students who needed the application but on a basic level. The range of element on the periodic table made differentiation easier.

The biggest challenges we are still facing is the sticky fingers and using technology. The other big challenge is the limited digital cameras I have access to. The science department “video cameras” that we can get photos from are booked out for the next month. I luckily have access to 4 cameras from yearbook. The Tech Academy (our school within a school) had 5 more cameras but no memory chips. Fortunately I have tons of memory chips from yearbook. So in the end I did secure about 10 digital cameras but I have 32 kids per class.

As a solution, I have decided to take a series of “atom” and “marshmallow” photos for the class to use. Sort of like stock photos. I can provide them in my virtual workspace for students to select from. Then tomorrow during class students can take photos of their finished atom. This way when the work with VoiceThread on Friday and over the weekend, they can have enough photos to create a good digital story.

A student offered up solution to our recording challenge. My principal was unable to come through with the headsets I requested. AJ mentioned that we have a program on our laptops that you can type in your words and the computer will read it aloud for you. Another student suggested doing that and then having the VoiceThread record the computer reading. I was impressed with the team/classroom problem solving.

I still have some challenges ahead particularly with VoiceThread. I personal found the program easy to use but I also put time in “tooling around” on the program. I had a few groups test pilot the program and they wanted me to more show them “how”. It took a little work to push them to explore on their own. I am concerned with an entire class wanting me “show them how” rather than explore and try on their own. The recent attempts with the Avatar Voki activity helped to stimulate their sense of exploration so maybe that will bleed over?