The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
STOCKING THE LAB
Lakeland grant sparks curiosity for third grade science class
Marianne Armstrong loves teaching science to her thirdgrade students at All Saints
School in Wickliffe.
And, since her career began 25 years ago, she has received four grants to fund her work in the classroom.
Most recently, support from the Thomas W. Mastin/Lakeland
Science Classroom Grant was able to fill a need she saw in her classroom for a lesson on light energy.
The donation was able to provide safety mirrors, flashlights, laser pointers, concave mirrors, convex mirrors, prisms and spectroscopes, along with other supplies.
When Armstrong was alerted by the grant committee that her lesson would be funded, she was excited for her students to be able to experience the three-day, hands-on science experiment she had planned out for them.
“It’s always fun when you can get something for the students,” she said.
Armstrong’s lesson was structured to enable her students to make discoveries on their own.
“They were able to figure out why we have certain mirrors, like on telescopes and microscopes. They also figured out how to use convex mirrors to see around the corners of streets,” she said.
One of the experiments they were able to perform involved a mirror maze where they would use flashlights and lasers to see how light would bounce back and forth between safety mirrors.
“They learned that you can’t bend light, but you can bounce it from one point to another,” Armstrong said. “They realized that lasers work much better than flashlights, which they found did not work.”
In another lesson alliteratively titled “The Magic of Mirrors,” students wrote their names down on index cards and held them up to a mirror to reveal a backwards reflection of their writing.
“They were able to bring what they learned into real life and figure out why ‘ambulance’ is always spelled backwards on an ambulance because then you’ll be able to read it right through your rearview mirror,” Armstrong said.
The last day of experiments revolved around rainbows.
“On that day they had to find rainbows, so they used prisms and they even used CDs,” Armstrong said. “When they shined the flashlight onto the DC it made rainbows shine all over the wall.”
Another element of the day involved using a Fresnel lens to pop balloons.
Fresnel lenses are flat on one side and ridged on the other to focus beams of light.
They are most well known for their use in lighthouses, but Armstrong’s third-graders used them to pop balloons of all sizes.
“They even blew some up really big and really small, thinking the light would never pop it, and it popped within like three seconds,” she said.
Now that her class is moving onto other lessons, Armstrong is starting to think about possibilities for her next grant application.
She said something like
a 3D printer or a poster maker would be both beneficial to the whole school and help All Saints in working towards its goal of becoming a designated STEAM school.
The Ohio Department of Education recognizes STEM and STEAM schools for having students use science, technology, engineering, arts/humanities and mathematics to understand information inside and outside the classroom.
Armstrong was able to share her class’s experiences with the Thomas W. Mastin/Lakeland Science Classroom Grant at the Partners in Science Excellence symposium on Jan. 7.
“You get nervous being up there with other people, but it’s fun and once I get talking about it I get all excited,” Armstrong said.
Principal Terri Armelli said the third-graders at All Saints are grateful for the donation that has enabled them to have such an interactive experience with mirrors.
“We are thankful to Mrs. Armstrong for applying for this grant so our children could experience this fun hands-on experience,” said Armelli.