PIPS2 Activity :
Class Lesson
Discuss sound energy. Observe vibrations by :-
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‘pinging’ elastic band
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putting rice on a drum and clapping hands above the rice to make the rice ‘jump’
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putting ruler on the edge of a table and observing what happens when it is hit. Observing how the vibration changes as you change the length of the ruler hanging off the table.
Catch sound by :-
Homework Activity : Design and make a ‘string telephone’ using junk material from home. We will test them in class and investigate which telephone works best.
Follow-up to Homework Activity : Allow children the opportunity to tell each other about their telephones and how they were made. Allow the children the opportunity to try out each other’s telephones.
Investigate whether they work best when the string is loose or taut. Establish that the string should be taut for them to work best.
Discuss ideas about how to test the telephones and how to make the test a fair test.
Test the telephones and discuss the findings.
Complete simple report sheet (Word File)
Teacher's Comment :
My Primary 2 class used a variety of different materials for the ‘string’ e.g. rope, cotton, tape, ribbon, wool, string and for the ‘collectors’ e.g. yoghurt pots, bottles, plastic cups and tin cans. This alone stimulated a lot of discussion as they were interested in how different they all were and yet they all worked. I did pose the question, ‘which one do we think will work best and why’ and there were a wide variety of suggestions. Allowing time for them to investigate freely was important before trying to look at fair testing. When we did talk about fair testing it was important to establish exactly what this meant as one girl suggested that it meant that ‘everyone got a turn’. We decided to work in groups of 3, to find the best telephone in that group and then we could test the winners against each other. To keep the test fair they decided that :-
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the same person should always do the speaking.
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the person should use the same volume of voice.
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the person should say the same rhyme each time.
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the string should be taut.
no-one should test their own telephone.
Evaluation of Homework Activity :
It was difficult to establish a single winner using the children’s opinion about which worked best - the final 3 all worked well and had different lengths of different materials and different collectors. At a later date we did manage to borrow a sound sensor, which gave a more accurate result. However, the children had been involved in high quality scientific discussion and investigation, which they all enjoyed. It was an excellent way to evaluate the children’s understanding of the concepts. We got positive feedback from pupils and parents and I was pleased with the variety of phones made. Often this activity in class leads to most phones looking very much the same.
Susan Tollick
Torbain Primary School
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