Discovering How Kids View Science

Since I am a secondary major I have had limited experience with students in the primary grades. I have worked with 4th graders in Glastonbury which not only was a completely different setting but did not have any experience in finding out how they understand science. Both of the students told me that so far this year they learned about waves, water currents and mixing hot and cold water. Neither of them have tried science experiments at home on their own but one did show interest in doing so. The experiment I conducted with them involved rolling a metal ball down a ramp and colliding with another ball.

When I asked them what they think happens in a collision the student said that the two things either collapse and don't move or they go in opposite directions. This student briefly just explained elastic and inelastic collisions. By saying that they can go in opposite directions also shows he could probably understand that the forces in the collision are acting in opposite directions. I was very surprised to hear him explain this. The second student I interviewed said that when the marbles collide they will "stick together". When she conducted the demonstration she witnessed the other type of collision instead. I asked her why she thought the metal balls did not stick together and she said it was because they are not made of the same material. She then told me that "when they hit each other they have opposite ways". As far as I can tell they are made of the same material but she must have associated this idea with some things that mix with the same material but not others like water and oil.

The second thing we looked at was whether or not the size of the marbles made a difference. When the large marble was going to collide with the smaller one the first student predicted that "it will hit harder cuz the big one has more weight". The second student had a similar response involving the larger marble's weight. The first student then wanted to find out more about moving things like "flying cars" and "hoverboards"(skateboards that fly like in Back to the Future II). The other student showed interest in the center of the Earth and what is in the core. From this visit I can tell that these kids were thinking about science and trying to explain the events they see with some kind of rational. They both made predictions, conducted the experiment, made observations and came up with explanations for what they saw. I was very impressed with the level of understanding and comprehension both of the students had.