You may find this background information helpful as you begin to work with students in this age group. Students generally enter fifth grade as 9- or 10-year-olds and leave eighth grade as 13- or 14-year-olds. As you probably know and remember, these years are a time of enormous physical, emotional, and cognitive change.
How are fifth-to-eighth-graders learning?
Students of this age are still primarily concrete thinkers. Middle schoolers are beginning to shift to more abstract thinking, but still understand concepts best if first presented in concrete terms. Other characteristics of learners of this age:
They are thorough and conscientious observers.
They can understand and record data describing cause-and-effect relationships. They are beginning to understand multiple causation.
With guidance, they can generate simple hypotheses, conduct tests, record and analyze data to find evidence for or against the original hypotheses, and determine whether a test is "fair." However, they cannot always identify all variables influencing an experiment, and they often cannot broaden their findings to a larger purpose.
They can generate and interpret simple graphs. However, most have not been exposed to the formal use of variables in expressions or in the graphic representation of mathematical relationships, such as using lines to indicate "directly proportional to" or "increases with decreasing pressure", etc.
They are interested in what other people do and in unfamiliar events. They can imagine themselves in another place or time.
They tend to be physically restless and self-conscious. They generally enjoy working in small groups.
(adapted from National Science Teachers' Association, Pathways to the Science Standards, "Characteristics of the Elementary School Learner")
What engineering concepts and vocabulary are appropriate?
Depending on their school curriculum, upper elementary and middle school students may or may not have been exposed to basic physical science concepts such as mass, force, and gravity. If you will be working in a classroom, ask the teacher ahead of time what concepts students have been learning. But it's usually a good idea to start from the beginning, explaining all terms as you go. Try to use concrete examples when introducing new concepts.
Below are some age-appropriate definitions of basic terms you may find helpful:
- mass: the amount of matter in an object.
- force: a push or pull acting on an object.
- gravity: the force that pulls objects toward Earth.
- weight: the force of gravity on an object on Earth's surface.
- tension: a stretching force pulling an object apart.
- compression: a squeezing force pushing a material together.
- live load: the weight of all temporary, movable, parts or passengers of a structure.
- dead load: the weight of the non-moveable parts of a structure.
- variable: something that changes during an experiment. Remember that even eighth graders have not been exposed to algebra yet--use words to represent variables rather than letters.
What is science inquiry learning?
Many science educators, as well as the National Science Education Standards, promote an active, student-centered format of science learning referred to as inquiry. Through a natural process of asking questions and developing the means to answer them, students are engaged in the process of science as well as the content.
The inquiry process begins with the opportunity to ask a question about something the learner observes. The learner then makes predictions, develops a hypothesis, and plans and conducts an investigation to test the hypothesis. The learner collects data and analyzes it with regard to the original hypothesis. The next steps should be to examine alternative explanations, communicate results, and ask a new question raised by the findings.
Students learning through inquiry:
- develop their reasoning skills and increase their problem-solving ability
- practice teamwork in a way increasingly needed in workplace
- are motivated-they have increased ownership in the process and the information because they asked the questions
As students are doing activities, here are some questions to ask to support inquiry learning:
- "What do you think?"
- "What would happen if..."
- "How do you know?"
- "Does your data support your conclusions?"
- "What else would you like to know?"
