What's
the Matter with My Orange?
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What's
the Matter with My Orange? |
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I chose this lab because it allowed my students to better develop their observation and inquiry skills and see a real life example of a physical/chemical change. I liked that this inquiry can be useful for students of all ability levels. Also, I like that it dealt with change (physical and chemical) and making observations. This inquiry was also cool because it encourages students to try the same thing at home (that we did in class) with their parents. The only thing I would change is the graph. All the oranges I bought were so close in mass (around 200 grams). This made it impossible to see any change from week to week in mass on the graph. The scale on the graph was much too large for us to effectively use. One thing I felt was also challenging was holding students accountable for the observations/hypothesis they made. I thought I did a good job on this until I collected all my student's work. I connected this inquiry to the beginning of our physical/chemical change unit. This allowed my students the chance to see a concrete example of some abstract ideas. My students and I very much enjoyed this inquiry. I plan on using this for years to come. THANKS for developing such a neat inquiry. Jeff Walters,
Sixth Grade Teacher Thank you, Jeff, for your helpful feedback. As a result, I have modified the data sheets in this inquiry to give teachers greater flexibility. John Farmer I choose this inquiry as I was just fascinated with the idea of watching this orange shrivel into something different as the school year proceeded. I actually have had oranges in my fridge at home that seemed to get smaller and shriveled but I just threw them out, somehow knowing they were no good anymore but never questioning why. I thought it would be interesting to give my students the experience and maybe turn on their curiosity to wonder why rather than just accept that it is. What I liked about this inquiry is none of my kids knew what was going to happen. I feel like I've encountered an untouched area of their knowledge base and they are really into seeing what's going on. I would not change anything about the inquiry. I did make some mistakes along the way like I should have made sure that the oranges fit easily into the jars. I forgot to have one class put the orange in a bag before putting it in the jar and then couldn't get the orange out of the jar again. I looked pretty silly trying to get this orange out of the jar. I have not connected this activity to anything else in our course of study yet. We are doing Astronomy currently and I couldn't come up with a way to overlap the two concepts. I'm hoping that as the oranges continue to change I can overlap it with some of my chemistry unit at the end of the year. Heather Blaylock I chose this center because it demonstrates and discusses nine topics covered in my science classes. We had gone over most of the information so I used this for review. The topics not discussed yet were used as introduction. This center also gave the students the opportunity to practice science skills on a weekly basis in a structured setting. I made some changes to the center activities. Our observations were described by the groups in the class and recorded by a different recorder each week. The students learned after three weeks that they were in charge when we worked on this class activity. The only involvement I had was to tell each group where to take their orange. This encouraged them and made the activity more desirable. After week five, I stopped graphing the orange masses on the overhead graph (Data Sheet) that was supplied with the student pages. Instead, during week ten the students were to graph the mass of one orange for the entire ten weeks using the measurements from the weekly observations. I had them create the graphs on standard graph paper with five gram increments. This more clearly showed the change in the masses of the oranges over the ten-week period. I also had each student write a paragraph on the back of their graph to explain what they learned... Every Monday I assigned in their journal for the students to hypothesize about the condition of the oranges for that week. A discussion of our hypotheses led us to the activities. The students were very eager to record our observations at the beginning of this center. As the weeks passed and the smell grew stronger, the students' eagerness diminished. No group wanted to be THE group to describe the smell. I, however, grew to love Mondays just to see the looks and expressions on their faces when they had to smell the orange. The students did a wonderful job of conducting these activities and reviewing the background pages for discussions! Denise Prichard
Your innovation of having students graph all ten weeks for one orange and write about their learning is a nice addition to this inquiry. I will add this to the Lesson portion of the inquiry. John Farmer Last year I had the kids build a decomposition chamber described in the book Bottle Biology. It was very effective, but the weekly stench from the activities was awful and I decided I'd only do that every other year (I have both fifth and sixth grades in my classroom throughout the day, so the kids would at least see the activity once in two years.) When I saw this orange activity, I thought it might be a good alternative. It was simpler, just as effective, and I didn't go through a whole can of cinnamon air freshener during the project! I teach three different sixth grade homerooms and wanted each to have some ownership of the project, so each class was responsible for finding the mass of a jarred orange and an open-air orange. We kept the weekly masses on a large classroom chart. Every sixth grader had to graph all 6 oranges at the end. We added a quick review of the concepts at the end by having small groups responsible for planning and performing mini-skits of the topics listed on the background information pages.......... It was easy for me to tell where there were still some misconceptions as the kids pulled their skits together. (Somehow the kids had gotten the idea that rotten, fermenting grapes are picked to make wine.) I did have difficulty finding large jars, so I cut an empty 2 liter pop bottle in half and forced the top half down over the bottom half to use as a jar. It worked fine. For consistency, we also used the bottom halves of 2 liter bottles for the open-air oranges. It was easy keeping the oranges labelled per homeroom by using a permanent marker on the empty 2 liter containers. We had some fun at the expense of a student whose name is Jarrod, when he asked as he read the titles on our classroom chart what "jarrod oranges" were... Sheryl Melvin I chose this inquiry because it covered so many concepts, such as the water cycle, dehydration, decomposition, physical vs. chemical change, and measuring. I liked that the lesson compared a dehydrated orange to a decomposed orange. Students were surprised that an orange could change so drastically. I would change the amount of time spent on this inquiry. For students to truly understand each week's concept, I would set aside class time to expand on them a little more and have discussion. I would spend more time on related activities that support dehydration, decomposition, fungi, bacteria, and the other science concepts. I would have students spend less time on observations. Recording the same information week after week bored them, and they lost interest in the cool stuff going on with their oranges. I think written observations should be done every three weeks instead of each week. Looking at the liquid from the bagged oranges was a perfect opportunity to teach students how to use a microscope. To sum up, I thought this inquiry was definitely beneficial, but I think students would get more out of it if the focus was more on what's going on with each orange instead of written observations. Veronica Rodriguez I chose this inquiry because the amount of time that I have to devote to material outside of my curriculum is very limited. I thought that this would be a great way to incorporate the On-line course and still teach my "normal" lessons. I found that it took far more time to teach my students how to use a balance, document observations, and instruct on the variety of mini-lessons that were involved each week than I thought it would. This was a worthwhile lesson in that the students felt that they took responsibility in the classroom for the week they were assigned to make their observations. I had 3 different students each week go to the station and delegate responsibilities to each other. The first was the documentation person, the second was the weighing person, and finally the third person was the reader of the information including one of the background pages that was supplied. We graphed the weight of the oranges each week and started to see that it was very involved to get colored pencils, their graphs, and the overhead projector out so that I could graph along with the students. This actually took longer than I had planned. So nearing the end of the experiment we still had the students observing and documenting, but we did not graph the last 6 weeks until the last day. My students benefited from the experiment through their improvement in their responsibility, experience using a balance, and taking down observations in a lab setting. However, I think that I would have better use for this lesson in the 8th grade curriculum. Nora Keen FASCINATING!!! However, for want of anything better and very large oranges, I put them in a ziplock baggie and then in a plastic pretzel barrel (instead of the glass jars suggested in the inquiry). One is rapidly decomposing. The other is the same as it was the day we put it in. The decomposing one is beginning to smell and the plastic container doesn't work! The odor in my room yesterday morning was overwhelming. I went to the cafeteria and got a large glass jar for both. We aren't suppose to have glass in the room, but the risk of danger is considerably less than the smell! I'll just put them where the kids can't get to them. The weighing results have been fascinating - and VERY dramatic! ...The kids suggested that we only put two measurements per page as all four are visually confusing. I just don't know what two to put together - both decomposing, and both dehydrating or one of each. We'll play with it -- any suggestions? Jan Vanderplough As long as the bags are sealed, the only odor you should get is that of the fermenting alcohol from the yeast. It can be powerful if the plastic or glass container doesn't have a tight fitting lid as you've discovered, but it is a harmless odor...If you're only going to graph two, I'd suggest the orange that is the most decomposed and the one that is the most dehydrated. This will give a nice contrast on the graph. John Farmer I chose this inquiry because I think kids are fascinated with the process of rotting. They really enjoyed watching the rotting and dehydration. I liked this unit because the information sheets were full of useful information. The students and I learned about yeast, bacteria, fungus, fermentation, dehydration, decomposition, physical and chemical change together. Food chains and the water cycle were also concepts highlighted by this unit. The students had to complete a line graph and write down their observations. This was challenging to them. The only thing I would change about the inquiry would be to use naval oranges rather than juice oranges. The jarred oranges would not rot for several weeks. I put holes in them per the advice of John Farmer which did get them to rot. I think that maybe they are called juice oranges because their skin doesn't allow for much transpiration to occur, keeping them juicy!!!! I found a book called What Rot! Nature's Mighty Recycler by Elizabeth Ring and photographs by Dwight Kuhn. The ISBN # is 1-56294-671-4. It was quite interesting with great pictures. Some of my students did research on their own and some did an observation of something decomposing at home. My students enjoyed watching the changes in the oranges. After the last week we cut open the dehydrated orange which was fun to see how dried out it was. They had a tough time with the line graphs and my patience was really tested. The first few weeks many had to redo these graphs because they were a mess. However, many caught on and I put the results on a class graph each week which helped them complete their own. One big problem I had was the scale we used to measure the weight of the oranges. It is not a good one and I can't vouch for its accuracy. I think it was good enough to get across the point that the unjarred oranges lost weight and the jarred oranges did not. I helped them with the compare and contrast webs by putting some terms on the board for them to fill in. I felt that evaporation occurred in both the jarred and unjarred oranges since the jarred oranges had to have evaporated prior to condensing. Again, this was another great unit. Diane Douglas My
students were amazed by the difference between the jarred orange (decomposition)
and the unjarred orange (dehydration) after only one month. |