Students worked in collaborative learning groups to ask questions and research on the above outcomes. Next, students had to build their own musical instrument and manipulate its sound in a presentation format of their choice, to show their learning.
Students play and record the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” song using musical instruments and analyze the intensity of the sound using free audio editing and recording software. Then they use hollow Styrofoam half-spheres as acoustic mirrors (devices that reflect and focus sound), determine the radius of curvature of the mirror and calculate its focal length. Students place a microphone at the acoustic mirror focal point, re-record their songs, and compare the sound intensity on plot spectrums generated from their recordings both with and without the acoustic mirrors. A worksheet and KWL chart are provided.
In this lesson, students are introduced to audio engineers. They discover in what type of an environment audio engineers work and exactly what they do on a day-to-day basis. Students come to realize that audio engineers help produce their favorite music and movies.
What is Chrome Music Lab?
Chrome Music Lab is a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments.
What can it be used for?
Many teachers have been using Chrome Music Lab as a tool in their classrooms to explore music and its connections to science, math, art, and more. They’ve been combining it with dance and live instruments. Here’s a collection of some uses we’ve found on Twitter.
The ComPADRE Digital Library is a network of free online resource collections supporting faculty, students, and teachers in Physics and Astronomy Education. Each collection contains materials designed for a specific community.
Select teaching resources to start exploring. Also select resources from the top menu to find more options - including for students.
Students gain a deeper understanding of how sound sensors work through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT taskbots and sound sensors. Student groups each program a robot computer to use to the sound of hand claps to control the robot's movement. They learn programming skills and logic design in parallel. They experience how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions to move and turn, similar to the human sense of hearing. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.
This six-day lesson provides students with an introduction to the importance of energy in their lives and the need to consider how and why we consume the energy we do. The lesson includes activities to engage students in general energy issues, including playing an award-winning Energy Choices board game, and an optional graphing activity that provides experience with MS Excel graphing and perspectives on how we use energy and how much energy we use.
Students model and design the sound environment for a room. They analyze the sound performance of different materials that represent wallpaper, thick curtains, and sound-absorbing panels. Then, referring to the results of their analysis, they design another room based on certain specifications, and test their designs.
The University of Saskatchewan offers this tremendous resource that promotes the richness and diversity of the sciences, nurture curiosity and innovation, and inspire students to consider a career in science, and support teachers to provide exciting educational experiences.
Check out the great collection of video and activity resources for teachers and parents to supplement and enhance Grade 1 science learning.
The University of Saskatchewan offers this tremendous resource that promotes the richness and diversity of the sciences, nurture curiosity and innovation, and inspire students to consider a career in science, and support teachers to provide exciting educational experiences.
Check out the great collection of video and activity resources for teachers and parents to supplement and enhance Grade 4 science learning.
I created a grade 4 science unit on sound. For the student’s final assessment, they got to make music by creating their own instruments. There were several components to this assessment.
The students completed a plan which included what materials they needed, how their instrument was going to make sound and change pitch and volume.
Then they had to construct their instrument.
In a sharing circle, the students shared their information and how and why they made their instrument the way it was.
Have a class jam session!
This assessment allowed students to be creative (not one of the instruments were similar)! The students had to use their critical thinking and collaboration skills to construct instruments that made sound and could change pitch and volume. There was trial and error and students going to one another for help. This assessment allowed for triangulation through conferring, observing, and the final product. The various steps also allowed for differentiation as some students were strong with writing their responses and others preferred sharing their knowledge through speech and hands on! The class jam session allowed for a celebration of learning!
Students learn about how sound sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of hearing. They look at the hearing process sound waves converted to electrical signals sent to the brain through human ear anatomy as well as sound sensors. A mini-activity, which uses LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT intelligent bricks and sound sensors gives students a chance to experiment with the sound sensors in preparation for the associated activity involving the sound sensors and taskbots. A PowerPoint® presentation explains stimulus-to-response pathways, sensor fundamentals, the unit of decibels, and details about the LEGO sound sensor, including how readings are displayed and its three modes of programming sound input. Students take pre/post quizzes and watch a short online video. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to appreciate how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions to via programming.
"Callysto is a free, multimodal learning program for grades 5-12 students in Canada. The program is part of a two-year pilot project by Cybera and the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), who received funding from the federal government’s CanCode program to build and employ new technologies that promote digital literacy and help Canada’s youth develop the foundational skills required to become the future drivers of innovation."
Learning modules are available for Math, ELA, Science, Social, etc.
Click RESOURCES then select - learning modules, lesson plans, Indigenous content, data, computational thinking, problem solving.
Use the "bubbles" to filter to the subject.
Click GET STARTED to find the teacher starter kit and free full courses on computing science 10, AI, computational thinking, data science.
Students experience a simulation of echolation, using the sensory method to walk along a path while blindfolded. This relates to the issue of bycatching by fisheries, which they learned about in the associated lesson. Bycatching affects marine animals, especially dolphins, which use echolocation to identify the location of objects in the water, but have difficulty identifying nets, and thus are often caught accidentally. Students learn how echolocation works, why certain animals use it to determine the size, shape and distance of objects, and how humans can potentially take advantage of dolphins' echolocation ability when developing bycatch avoidance methods.
The Lethbridge Curriculum Developers Group Explore French Through Music website is a free, open access resource to support French language instruction with fun and interactive songs. Their are various materials provided on the website including songs, interactive activities, and cultural exploration. Activities are available for individuals to download for use in your class or use them as models for developing your own language materials.
Students learn about sound waves and use them to measure distances between objects. They explore how engineers incorporate ultrasound waves into medical sonogram devices and ocean sonar equipment. Students learn about properties, sources and applications of three types of sound waves, known as the infra-, audible- and ultra-sound frequency ranges. They use ultrasound waves to measure distances and understand how ultrasonic sensors are engineered.
Through investigating the nature, sources and level of noise produced in their environment, students are introduced to the concept of noise pollution. They learn about the undesirable and disturbing effects of noise and the resulting consequences on people's health, as well as on the health of the environment. They use a sound level meter that consists of a sound sensor attached to the LEGO® NXT Intelligent Brick to record the noise level emitted by various sources. They are introduced to engineering concepts such as sensors, decibel (dB) measurements, and sound pressure used to measure the noise level. Students are introduced to impairments resulting from noise exposure such as speech interference, hearing loss, sleep disruption and reduced productivity. They identify potential noise pollution sources, and based on recorded data, they classify these sources into levels of annoyance. Students also explore the technologies designed by engineers to protect against the harmful effects of noise pollution.
Students are introduced to the concept of the image of music. After listening to a song, they draw images of it by deciding where different musical instruments were placed during recording. They further investigate audio engineering by modeling the position of microphones over a drum set to create a desired musical image.
Students are introduced to various types of hearing impairments and the types of biomedical devices that engineers have designed to aid people with this physical disability.
PhET Sims are now available in HTML5 as well!
Simulations can be sorted by subject area or grade. This is very helpful.
PhET is a collection of interactive computer simulations for teaching and learning physics, chemistry, math, and other sciences.
Simulations can be used directly on the site or downloaded and used that way.
The simulations are animated, interactive, and game-like environments where students learn through exploration. They emphasize the connections between real-life and the underlying science. These great activities help students visualize abstract concepts!