Running head: SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 1

Science Night Summary

Denise Torres

Pittsburg State University

SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 2

Science Night Summary

Introduction

Preparing for our Science Night took extensive planning on everyones part. We began to choose

our topics from a simple coin toss; we then chose our partners. Between our partners we had to

decide what discrepant event we were going to perform. We also had to decide between a

physical and a chemical change. Autumn, my partner in crime, and I worked together to created

Blobs in a Bottle. Going forth, I will talk about the process and how will were able to pull off

such a fun activity for the kids at Lakeside Elementary School.

Autumn and I maintain in contact through text messaging. We both figured it would be

easier if we just texted each other whenever we had a question. We tried to maintain a log to

record everything that we were doing but we seemed to always have other things going on. On

October 3rd we chose our topic and started planning the event this was during class time. On

October 5th we created the google document as well as the lesson plan to go along with our event.

We were instructed by Dr. Fincher to use the nextgenscience.org website, to find our standards

and the appropriate grade level. We were still unsure of what kind of event we wanted to do.

Autumn and I both did our search for events on our own. On the weekend of October the 9th we

found the event we were going to do, lava lamps. We came across fall break therefor we didnt

have much time to meet but before our 5 day weekend we met during class to begin working on

the lesson plan. Autumn was the one who filled it out, we began to work on it together but she

had finished it. During fall break, I had gone home. There I began to snoop around my moms

kitchen and had found most of what we were going to need. For our event we were going to need

glass bottles, in this case we used mason jars, vegetable oil, Alka-Seltzer water, food coloring,

and our trifold board to present our event. During fall break I was able to do the event at home
SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 3

with my mom, but I had ran into a few problems. The amount of water and the amount of oil

were not working out, so on Monday I had to ask Dr. Fincher what I could do in order to

experience more bubbles, she helped us by telling us to try less water, and it worked. On October

17, Autumn and I met at the library and planned the look of our board, we also finished writing

our lesson plan. That night we had agreed to meet the next day at the IRC to work on our board.

On October 18th, we met at 11 to use the die cutter to cut out the letters for our title. Autumn

printed out the information that we need to put on our board, due to the fact that she gets free

printing. I typed up the science portion that need to be on the board and the procedures. We

needed our board to be completed by Wednesday, because we were going to have a mini

demonstration with our peers. The night of October 18th I finished our board, which just entitled

gluing on the information as well as drawing on the lava lamp that I had drawn on our board. We

wanted our board to catch the students eyes. We wanted the students at Lakeside to stop and

learn about our chemical change through our homemade lava lamps.

We had several children stop at our table to learn about the Blobs in a Bottle. The

preconceptions that I thought the students would have were somewhat true. Some students were

able to tell us what would occur when you place oil and water in the same container. Some

students were more drawn in because they saw the bubbles after dropping the Alka-Seltzer. There

was a couple of girls that really surprised me because they knew more in depth information about

chemical reactions. The girls parents looked very intrigued by our event, it seemed that they

were very supportive of their daughters because one girl said she is always doing experiments at

home and that she wanted her dad to buy Mentos to drop them in a bottle of soda. The

demographics of Lakeside elementary school consist of 70% White, 16% Hispanic, 3% Black,

10% two or more races, 1% Hawaiian. Of the kids that attend Lakeside elementary, 67% are
SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 4

come from a household that is economically disadvantaged. During science night we met smart

kids from kindergarten to fourth grade. I personally saw more boys, hence the building has more

male students than girl students. (Kansas State department of education , 2013-2014). We had to

be prepared for every question possible that the stuents couldve had. We needed to make sense

to the child when we were explaining how the water and the oild dont mix and why when we

dropped a tablet of alka-seltzer it bubbled. We needed to create a schema like Piaget said, to help

the child organize hers/his thoughts. Obviously, students that were in kindergarten didnt apy

much attention to the actual process. They were more focused on the bubbles and the color that

was added to the glass container, which refers to the preoperation stage of Piages cognitive

development, Centration. Centration occurs when the child only focuses on one thing at a time.

(Sciecne and Cognitve Development, 2016).

For me personally the science night was fun. I was very nervous because I didnt know

what to expect. At first I wanted to talk with other people that had already been through it and

experienced it but I didnt know anyone. Either way Autumn and I rocked it and had lots of fun

doing several lava lamps. After doing the event several times it got easier to talk and explain the

process as well as the science behind it. At first, even though we went through our lesson plan

and instrusction part of our lesson plan, we had to look at our written notes. After a few, we were

just flying through the lesson and actually had it down to 5 minutes. After warming up and being

able to do it repeatedly it became easier to do the event and we barely had to look at our papers.

It was easier to talk to the students rather than the parents, maybe because I felt that the kids

were not going to judge us if we messed up; even though the parents were pretty into our event

too. We were able to follow our lesson plan for most of the time, there were a couple of times

that we were just so excited that either Autumn or I forgot to introduce ourselves. What I didnt
SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 5

notice is that we were not expecting so many kindergarten kids, if I could change something if

add more questions for them.There was a moment during the night that we were down to a cup

of oil and it was only 6:30pm. We freaked out but thankfully my fiance was able to save the day

and brought us a bottle to finish off the evening.

Using my notes from class in helping me determine what Nature of Sciece I could use to

link the understanding and attitudes of the kids towards science I would say it would be,

numeber 2; Scientific knowledge is a product of both observation and inference. The kids had to

observe and create a hypothesis to what would happen if we place the water and the oil in the

same glass container. I would also think that using the fifth NOS; Science is creative.

Conclusion

Throughout this process of creating an activity to show the students and present it, Ive

learned a lot. I know that practice makes perfect and in order for this activity to have worked as

well as it did, I had to do it at home several times in order to make sure that it would work. Being

prepared and ready to go was very important because if you werent kids would just move on,

which didnt happen to us. As a future teacher I believe that making a subject (that has been seen

as hard to understand or impossible to do in the classroom) fun and exciting will make my

students enjoy science time. I learned from myself that my creativity can be brought out in any

subject. I, myself was astonished to see the way our board and event turned out and how well the

students enjoyed it.

SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 6

Here are some of the pictures we took during science night.

SCIENCE NIGHT SUMMARY 7

References

Fincher, B. (2016). Science and Cognitive Development [Class Handout]. Department of

Education, Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, KS.

Kansas State department of education . (2013-2014). Retrieved November 2016, 02

from Kansas State department of Education Report Card:
https://online.ksde.org/rcard/building.aspx?org_no=D0250&bldg_no=1304

Nature of Science Notes. Denise Torres. Pg 14-16 in science notebook. September 14,
2016.