Can't We Go Back To Being Kids, Where All We Did Was Play?

Play is so crucial to every childhood.  It is what helps mold our curiosity.  Whether you are playing alone or in a group, the creativity involved in play is one's only limit.  "play returns us to the presymbolic drives of gut feelings, emotions, intuitions, and fun from which creative insights stem, thereby making us inventors." (Root, Bernstein, p. 267).  So therefore, why would we not strive for this to be an integral part of our curriculum as teachers?  "play transforms knowledge and builds understanding as we create our own worlds, personas, games, rules, toys and puzzles, and through them new sciences and art." (Root, Bernstein p. 268)

Play is not limited to any learning style.  An auditory learner might use play differently than a visual or kinesthetic learner, but they all will create things that are meaningful and engaging to them individually.

In digesting this assignment originally, my first thought was to create an assignment that would be used as a culminating assignment to the concept of energy transfer.  In this assignment, the students would create a stop motion animation out of clay that told a story and in the story would describe at least 3 different forms of energy transfer.  I think this would be a valuable and meaningful assignment, but after reading that the assignment should be something that introduces my topic, I abandoned that thought and came up with the assignment below.

Introduction Assignment to Energy Transfer (Play)

The task is to make a video where you are recorded doing the following things;

1. Dropping an egg from a height higher than 8 feet
2. Riding a unicycle for at least 10 seconds
3. Shooting a bottle rocket off
4. Pogo sticking for at least 10 seconds
5. Playing some sort of instrument (or singing)
6. Turning on a light switch
7. Running into a wall
8. Eating a candy bar
9. Roller skating or carpet
10. Create fire
11. Playing a game on a smart phone
12. Touching a 9V battery to your tongue and describing what you felt
13. Making a piece of toast
14. Shooting a total stranger with a big rubber band and recording their reaction
15. You and a total stranger playing on a teeter-totter

Using a video editing software (Windows Movie Maker-PC and Garage Band-MAC are two) create one continuous video with a title, music, and credits.

The students will then complete the unit on energy transfer and learn about what it is, etc.  They will then revisit the video each of them made (or their group) and continue editing the video to describe in each situation what energy they began with, what energy they ended with, and how it was transferred.

For example, #1 - Dropping an egg from a height higher than 8 feet, in the video, it would show a student completing this task but they would then describe that the egg is beginning with gravitational potential energy and as soon as the egg is released, some of the potential energy is converted to kinetic energy because the egg is in motion.  As the egg falls, more potential energy is converted to kinetic and the egg speeds up.  When the egg hits the ground, some kinetic energy is converted into sound and we interpret that as a "splat". Some of the eggs kinetic energy is converted into molecular kinetic energy when it hits the ground which causes some of the molecules of the shell to move and break apart from others which causes the shell to crack.

Their task would be to describe each energy transfer situation in as few words as possible while still conveying an accurate explanation of the transfer.

In this assignment students are able to investigate different energy transfers in a fun and engaging way.  They are able to create their own situations guided by only one parameter (showing what energy transfer I have asked).  They also get the opportunity to go back to something they created and, after learning what energy transfer is and how we use it in our lives, add explanation to each situation they created.