RUST WORK SAMPLE: A work sample is a complete scientific investigation. It includes the following’
Forming the investigation:
1. Students develop and write a specific question that they will be addressing with their experiment.
2. They then provide background information about the topic and make a hypothesis or prediction of the results.
Designing the Investigation
3. Next, students write a detailed numbered procedure. It should be specific enough that someone could follow it like a recipe and do the experiment correctly. In this section, students will identify the independent and dependent variables as well as the conditions that will be kept the same to make it a fair test. Students will identify a control for the experiment as well.
Collecting and Presenting Data
4. Once the procedure is written, students will do the experiment and collect data. Students will then organize and display data in tables, graphs, diagrams in a way that highlights patterns.
Analyzing and Interpreting Results
5. With the data collected and displayed, the final steps are to analyze the results, draw conclusions and generate questions or future experiments that would.
The final product will be written and turned in using the iPads.
Details about the rusting work sample: Students will take what they have learned about chemical reactions and reactivity of different metals to ask a question about rusting/corrosion. The big umbrella question is What kinds of conditions make rusting/corrosion worse or better? Students will think of a very specific question and design an experiment using metal pieces or nails in test tubes or petri dishes with different environments or coatings. The experiment should compare corrosion of different metals in the same environment or compare corrosion of the same metal in different environments. Another option is to evaluate methods of rust prevention. Students can use uncoated steel nails as a control and coat the nails in order to try to prevent rusting or use pre-coated nails such as painted nails, galvanized nails (zinc coated), copper coated, grease coated or magnesium wrapped nails.
One way to analyze results is to create a rating scale for rusting/corrosion and use before and after photographs taken with the iPads. A graph of the ratings will be a part of the analysis page.
BACKING UP YOUR WORK: Save to your Edmodo backpack, google docs, Files 1 server, or a drop box account if you have it. If your iPad were to get damaged or erased everything within the pages app would get wiped clear, so do back up your work each day you work on it by string it somewhere on a server.
TEMPLATE FOR WORK SAMPLE: Here is the basic template for the work sample in Microsoft Word. When students open it on the iPad they should save it in google docs, Word or Pages right away and work on it in one of those apps. If you don’t have internet at home, you should work in the Pages app because that is the only one that you will be abler to access without the internet. There are directions for how to format the document at the top of the template. PLease follow these carefully.
IF YOU MISSED INSTRUCTIONS IN CLASS: In class I went over the four main sections of a science work sample. Here is that introductory smart board presentation.
TURNING in the WORK SAMPLE: Students will turn in the worksample as a PDF using Edmodo. The due date will be posted here soon. We are starting this project on February 27th. I am hoping we will be done by March 6th.
SCORING OF THE WORK SAMPLE: How will student work be scored on this project? I recommend that you look at these before turning in your work sample. Here are downloadable PDFs of two types of score sheets. The first one shows what must be accomplished to receive a meeting score of a 4 on each section of the work sample. The second score sheet has a description of not meeting, meeting and exceeding for each section of the work sample.
PHOTOS OF RUSTING:
