Using Annotations to Unpack Embodied Models of States of Matter in Early Elementary Science

• In Event: 63.025 - Supporting Modeling Epistemologies in the Science Classroom

Abstract

Objectives. The Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) project aims to support full classrooms of young elementary students in learning about complex science phenomena through embodied activities. In this poster, we explore how two types of representations created during embodied activities – embodied models generated by students’ bodies and annotations generated by students using iPads – interact in productive ways to support students’ reasoning about water particle behaviors (See Fig. 1).

Theoretical Framing. Embodied cognition literature suggests that when students use their bodies to display science ideas, the physical representation can make complex ideas more accessible (Lindgren and Johnson-Glenberg, 2013). The STEP project builds on sociocultural theories of learning to facilitate this process using mixed-reality tools to mediate students’ embodied modeling – as students use their bodies to collectively model the behavior of water particles, the STEP system tracks their motion and generates a computer visualization of particles changing states (Authors, 2015).

Methods/Data. To provide additional sense-making opportunities, the newest iteration of STEP includes an iPad-based annotation tool, allowing students observing their peers’ embodied model to document key features of student movements and simulation feedback. This combination of embodied models and graphical annotations such as drawings or frequency graphs can help students practice linking information offered by each representation to create a more robust understanding of particle behaviors. A mixed-age first and second grade classroom in a Midwestern public school (n=46) completed eight days of embodied activities, with observing students using iPads to annotate their peers’ behaviors

Results and Scholarly Significance. Our analysis of students’ interactions reveals how young students’ annotations can help them observe and engage in sense-making while their peers work to develop embodied models. In our poster, we will explore how the intersection of graphical annotations and embodied models appeared across our data and the ways that these two representations intersected productively to help students wrestle with the physics of water particles. For example, a student noticed an anomalous amount of attraction in a graph, and this led to students discussing what attraction was actually like for water particles in a gaseous state. Students then created an embodied model of gas particles with the help of a facilitator to explore what kind of attraction the graph should display. Students treated the graphical representations as evidence for how the student particles in the space were behaving, but also viewed them as representations that could be critiqued if they did not accurately depict particle behaviors. The back-and-forth comparisons between embodied models and graphical representations allowed students to compare sources of evidence and have rich discussions about variables that impact states of matter (e.g. speed, distance, attraction, and energy). Our poster will explore how these comparisons between representational forms occurred in discussions and how the two student roles – particle and observer – worked together synergistically to create rich discussions of physics concepts.

Authors

• Megan Alyse Humburg, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Joshua Adam Danish, Indiana University