Finally our first experiment for the lower division students! Yesterday, the students decorated their science notebooks. While planning the experiments and lesson plans for the lower division students, who were younger than the upper division students, I often contemplated between whether to use the same lesson plans/experiments as the upper division students or to simplify the experiments and the lesson plans since the lower division students needed to understand the scientific concepts behind it. I eventually decided to simplify the lesson plans and use some of the experiments we did during the upper division sessions.

Since the volcanic eruption experiment was too common, I changed the experiment objective to exploding sandwich bags. The scientific concept behind this experiment was the same as that of the volcanic eruption experiment – the production of carbon dioxide gas from an acid base experiment using acetic acid and sodium bicarbonate. Instead, trapping this reaction inside a closed system of a zip lock bag would cause the pressure to continually increase in the zip lock bag until the explosion.

This was an experiment we did last Thursday during the upper division class, but during the lesson, I briefly explained the concept of acids and bases, showed the kids the chemical reaction equation and moved onto the actual experiment quite quickly.

I realized that younger students require more slow/personalized attention and explanation throughout this experiment, hence the reason why I could only take one photo. Despite conducting the experiment one student after one student, the students did not follow directions — running around the kitchen, hollering their songs, and fidgeting with the bag. However, one student succeeded in the experiment as his bag exploded. The other student did not close the zip lock bag quickly enough to trap the carbon dioxide gas, so the bag didn’t explode.

I think this class was a good realization moment for me, considering how I’ve learned about the different needs for each student and age level. But, I’m still confident that I’ll teach them well (hopefully) despite those differences!

– Joanna Kim, July 11th, 2022, 10:41AM KST-