Upper Primary pupils have shown resilience, they have accepted that experiments does not always work out the way we plan and they have been willing to try again!
We went back to the experiment with the 'spoon necklace' - we tried a different type of string this time and we did the whole experiment one more time and this time it worked! The pupils could hear a clear difference in volume when they compared the sound of the chiming spoons far away from the ear and with the string really close to the ears! We wrote a conclusion that explained what happened. The sound vibrations travel through the spoons and through the string and we directed the sound straight inside the ear, that is way it sounds louder!
Our volume experiment lead us over to our pitch experiment! There is a difference between volume and pitch, and we can explain it! A sound can be soft (low volume) or loud (high volume), but a soft sound can be a high-pitch sound or a low-pitch sound and the same with a loud sound. The pitch has to do with the frequency, how fast a sound wave vibrates.
We now felt lucky and continued with a second experiment. This time we wanted to investigate if the length of string affected the pitch of a sound. We built a set of chimes by using a stick, some spoons (exactly the same size, since we wanted it to be a fair test) and string that we doubled each time we tied a spoon to the stick. We rested the stick across the back of two chairs that we put on two desks of the same height.
When we used a fourth spoon to strike the back of each spoon, we could hear a difference in sound between the shortest and the longest string. The pitch changed. The longer the string, the lower the pitch and the shorter the string, the higher the pitch. Vibrations travel faster alonger the shorter string, so the note is higher.
We continued with more science experiments this week, and you are welcome to ask your child about them. We have built string telephones, compared the sound in empty and almost full bottles and we have worked with acoustics and how to absorb sounds. All the experiments worked out really well and we are happy, because now we could write really good scientific texts. We have explained what we are investigating, what we predict will happen (hypothesis), what we do during the experiment and what the result is (conclusion). We have made labelled drawings in our IPC-books and we have documented our work in a good way. You can see all our photos from this week here!
We had a lot of IPC during this week, but of course have we done lots of other things as well! We started the week reviewing what we have done in numeracy this autumn, and Thursday it was time for a numeracy test! The pupils worked really hard and they all did their best! The pupils have worked with their independent writing samples, grammar, reading and follow-up as well. There are also PE-lessons, swimming classes, music lessons, Dutch and French classes to attend, birthdays to remember and good-bye cards to prepare...