If you are a Montessori/Science teacher, you know the value of practical learning. We've developed a creative science activity that will engage your students’ imagination and reasoning in a fun way. Our card-based activity, SCALE-O-VERSE, has been tested in MIT’s SPARK program, and students loved it!
Contact Lenni to discuss what SCALE-O-VERSE can offer for your classroom.
SCALE-O-VERSE Card Activity
It’s hard to conceptualize the size of things that are too big or too small to be seen. However, much of scientific understanding depends on a grasp of these challenging dimensions. The SCALE-O-VERSE card activity engages participants in thinking and learning about the scale of objects in their world, most of which can’t be seen. The objects range from roughly the wavelength of a gamma ray (10-12 meters or 10 picometers) to the size of the Solar System (1011 meters or one terrameter). This activity has been tested as part of MIT’s Spark Program, on four classes of 7-8 graders. They loved it! Many said it was their favorite class of the 2-day program.
The activity is best played by 4-8 participants of ages 9+. Twenty-four cards show critters and things that are roughly an order in magnitude apart in size. Below are a few of the cards.
The SCALE-O-VERSE activity engages participants’ imagination and reasoning abilities through six phases. The activity is visual, tactile and social, culminating in a group decision making process.
1. Intro to orders of magnitude
Participants are given life-sized objects: a ladybug (actual scale photo), a tennis ball, and a tennis racket and are shown a projected image (life size) of a VW bug car. They are asked to estimate how many lady bugs (diameter) would fit onto the diameter of a tennis ball. They are then asked to estimate how many tennis balls would fit across the length of a tennis racket. And then they are asked to use the tennis racket and holding it up to the image of the car, estimate how many tennis rackets would span the length of the car. In all cases the answer is ~10. The powers of 10 is now connected to the concept of orders of magnitude using objects they see in everyday life.
2. Individual Sort
The twenty-four 8”x 8” cards are shuffled and dealt out to all the participants so, for example, four participants each get 6 cards. Now each participant is asked to sort their collection of cards from smallest to largest. Once this is accomplished, all participants show their sorting and talk about which ones they are pretty sure of and which ones they are not so sure of.
3. Group Sort
Now the group is shown a set of range cards featuring numbers all sorted from small to large, from 1 x 10-12 meters to 1 x 1011 meters.
Now the group is shown a set of range cards featuring numbers all sorted from small to large, from 1 x 10 -12 meters to 1 x 10 11 meters.
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Participants are asked to sort the set of all 24 cards, and match the sizes of the objects on the cards with the corresponding range card. They are encouraged to work together, ask each other questions, and come up with group decisions about where each card goes on the scale.
4. Answer Cards
Now participants are asked to take answer cards and match them up with the range cards. They can now see what cards were correctly matched, and they are asked what made the ones that were incorrectly matched difficult. Often the objects outside of the visible range are the most difficult.
5. Learning Units of Measurement
Participants are asked to work together to sort a set of cards with sizes shown. Now they need to learn the unit of measurement for things much smaller and much bigger than they are used to dealing with. How big is a megameter (Mm)? How big is a picometer (pm)? This is challenging!
6. “If I were”
A set of “If I were…” cards are then displayed, such as the one below. This phase of the activity empowers students to synthesize what they’ve learned—about relative sizes and units of measurements—in a playful and imaginative way. Each student is encouraged to think about how they might interact with the object on the card. For instance “If I were 1 megameter tall, I could make a show angel on Greenland.”
Wrapping it up
At the end of the activity, students are asked to reflect on and discuss what it was like for them. What did they learn? What was easy? What was hard? What was the most fun? The most frustrating? The most surprising? In our testing, students came away with a more tangible and intuitive grasp of scientific dimensions and the vastness of our universe, from sub-atomic to cosmic.