Activity Title: Benefits of having a theme for MyScience investigations

About:

While student groups choose their question to investigate they do so within the framework of a theme and topics. The use of a theme has many benefits.

Video 1: Benefits of having a theme (mythbusters)

Captions:

Music

Parent: 'Mythbusters' as a theme was great, it worked really well,

there was a lot of enthusiasm from the students and from Caitlyn,

she came home and told us that they'd had lessons where they were

watching the video of 'Mythbusters'.

The class teacher Mr Fisk did a lot of experiments at the beginning

and dressed up as a scientist just trying to prove or disprove

some scientific theories.

Yeah, I think it worked really well, 'Mythbusters' was a great theme

because it allowed the students to have something to build on,

something that they were familiar with from TV and it made it real

for them and they were trying to be like those scientists on TV

trying to figure out whether things were right or wrong

but also provided some challenges because they then had to come up

with something that they could try and prove or disprove which is

a little bit harder than I think she initially thought it would be.

But I think it was a really great motivator and it allowed

for some great experiments to take place.

Assistant Principal: The reason why I did 'Mythbusters' was because

the COGs unit we were supposed to be doing for that term had virtually

no Science in it and we needed to do some sort of Science.

So, I needed to do something that was fairly broad,

not related with something else and I did measurement 'Mythbusters' with a

year two that I had a few years ago and I found that that was very good.

But rather than limit it to 'Mythbusters' as to do with measurement

I thought 'Well, let's open it up to everything, the kids all love

the show so they get excited about those sorts of things'.

Notes:

The theme helps engage students. In this case, the theme of Mythbusters helps students to challenge commons myths, including many that are frequently presented in the media.