Make sure your children have a notebook and pencil to record their important observations. You can't do all that follows in one session and you may not choose to do everything. Playing with the acceleration of the elevator on the left hand side is a good place to start, even though you and your children may not have a good idea of acceleration. One of the desired outcomes of this activity is a better understanding of the important concepts relating to motion: position, velocity, acceleration, force and mass. Assuming you are using one computer for the group, make sure each student has an opportunity to suggest and try various accelerations to try to make Norbert and Zot weightless. Children should be encouraged to put into words their reasons for certain choices of acceleration and they should note important observations in their notebooks. Whether the children have been successful or not at making Norbert and Zot weightless, guide them to read through the web book on the right of the Squeak page when their attention wanes and their play is no longer productive. The first page of the book puts the project in perspective, the second page sets the stage, and the third page gives advise for getting the most out of the activity. If your children need review of position, velocity, acceleration, force and mass, have them look at pages 4-8 and have each student take the responsibility for learning 2 or 3 terms and explaining the terms to their other group members. They could search the web to get more information than I provided. They should also take notes and draw pictures that exemplify their term. Position and velocity have short active investigations (pages 4 and 5) they can do to better learn the concept. Have them work together to explore those short active investigations. When they have the concepts down, lead them to the explorations on page 11 and have them divide up the work. For example, they can each observe, record, and plot some of data. When it is all combined they will have a final product. The children can learn from each other as they each develop different approaches to observing, recording, and plotting data. There is a separate Squeak project for the children to review plotting. Do that if they need it and when they are done have them all participate in deciding what vertical and horizontal scales to use on their graph. If you get through the explorations, you are ready to go on to the challenges on pages 12 and 13.
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