Noticing Change in Rate

• In Event: Facilitating Learning Across Diverse Contexts

Abstract

The Next Generation Science Standards foreground practices for analyzing and interpreting data as key learning objectives of the K-12 science curriculum. An embodied intervention was implemented to help 8th grade students interpret a particularly challenging dataset and infer that a cold liquid’s rate of temperature change decreased over time. For the intervention, students were invited to “act out” the temperature change by walking along a giant horizontal thermometer while their classmates clapped out the passage of time. To arrive at the correct temperature at the correct time, students had to change pace from fast to slow. One student’s enactment is analyzed. Results suggest the intervention succeeded in helping the students notice the changing rate of temperature change.

Authors

• Hillary Lucille Swanson, Northwestern University

• Dragan Trninic, University of California - Berkeley