What are some of my most powerful learning moments and what made them so?

One of my most powerful learning moments with working with the elementary school kids is that you just have to go with the flow for most things. I noticed that the children, or at least the ones my partner and I were working with, tended to have shorter attention span when it came to the actual science aspect. When I noticed this, I realized that things aren’t going to go exactly how it was planned. The way that a teacher or two told us to do it was have us, the high school students, pour the substances while the elementary school students got to play around with it. Some of the students, though, got impatient and wanted to help pour things. So, we decided that they could help pour some of the safer substances, such as water in the oobleck. Another example was that since they have a lot of energy, they got bored with looking at the reactions or playing around with the oobleck so we thought it’d be a good idea to take breaks since we had a lot of free time. Instead of the high school students telling the younger students what to do, we asked what they wanted to do and we followed along with it, since it was appropriate, so we knew they would be entertained. They ended up having a good time and a few of the other students of other groups joined us.

What were some of the most interesting discoveries I made while working with the younger students?

Some of the most interesting discoveries I made while working with the younger students is that they want to be hands on and need to be hands on to get a good understanding of what they’re doing. Because, as a result, they get curious and start to ask questions which helps them gain more knowledge.

What part of this shared learning experience did you enjoy the most and why?

The parts of this shared learning experience I enjoyed the most was seeing how excited the kids got when the reactions occurred. Since they were so impatient in the moments leading up to the reaction they were so fascinated when it happened. Besides the actual science part of the day, the part I enjoyed most was being around their high, carefree, energy. They didn’t stress about anything and found a good time in everything they did which is a relief. Being in a high school all day where there is stress in every corner, whether it’s society’s pressure or pressure with school work itself, it can be draining. So having the younger students around to take away from all that, even if it was for a short amount of time, was relieving.

Lab Analysis