Inside the Classroom: Meghan Nelson - Cox Elementary
Inside the Classroom: Meghan Nelson - Cox Elementary
Inside the Classroom is a series that visits Northwest ISD campuses throughout the year and highlights the magical moments that happen between teachers and students each and every day across the entire 234 square miles of NISD.
Rubber bands, spoons and weather warning sirens. What do they all have in common? Meghan Nelson is using them to teach her second-grade students about sound, more specifically volume and vibration.
This week’s edition of Inside the Classroom takes us inside Ms. Nelson’s class at Cox Elementary where the Cougars aren’t just looking inside their classroom, but also outside their window, for real-world examples to connect to their lesson.
Ms. Nelson is in her sixth year teaching at Cox Elementary, and as we visited for a Friday afternoon science lesson, her students were out of their seats and engaged in lots of hands-on learning. Throughout the entire lesson, Ms. Nelson referred to her classroom as the “lab”, helping to get her students in the mood for some serious science experimentation.
The lesson started with a fascinating, high-energy video for students to view that helped to visually represent the science of sound. As students watched, Ms. Nelson placed rubber bands at each student’s desk.
After brief instructions from Ms. Nelson, students independently strummed and plucked their rubber bands in various ways on different surfaces and observed the vibrations. They then shared with their class what they saw and heard.
Next, Ms. Nelson used a bag of macaroni and drums borrowed from the Cox music class to further show examples of vibrations. She beat the drum softly to produce low volume and very few vibrations, then harder to show an increase in volume and watched as the macaroni vibrated off the drum and onto the floor.
When discussing the differences, this is when Ms. Nelson began to reference the very real example of high volume that was sitting right outside of their window. Ms. Nelson’s classroom window looks to the north and has a direct view of the weather warning siren that sits near the back entrance to Cox Elementary.
On the first Wednesday afternoon of each month, they hear the siren’s monthly test, and now Ms. Nelson has worked it into their science lesson. It is even the center of this lesson’s learning target:
Today we will review sound and volume.
So that we can answer the phenomenon.
I will know I have it when I can respond to the question: Why is the siren the loudest sound?
Next, students wrote on sticky notes what they noticed about vibrations and added their notes to a poster at the front of the classroom.
After Ms. Nelson shared some of the sticky notes with the class, the real fun began as the class moved on from studying vibrations to exploring volume. To do this, Ms. Nelson gave each student a metal spoon and let them hit their spoons on different surfaces to investigate the differences in volume.
She set a two-minute timer and gave her students the freedom to explore wherever they pleased. Students hit their spoons on the walls, their desks, their backpacks, water bottles and everything between.
When the timer was up, students gathered together on the carpet in the front of the room and discussed their findings. Ms. Nelson showed volume differences in a whisper and her “teacher voice,” then had students return to their desk to again write on sticky notes, this time about what they noticed in their volume experiments.
Even on a Friday afternoon, Ms. Nelson’s class stuck to their tasks and finished their lesson ahead of schedule, earning them some time on their Chromebooks to play a game that reinforced their science lessons from the week.
The range of volume during our afternoon with Ms. Nelson’s class ranged from zero (quietly sharing thoughts on sticky notes) to 100 (spoons on the book shelves) and everywhere between (rubber bands on chairs).
Soon enough, on a Wednesday afternoon, it will go even further beyond that and Ms. Nelson’s class will instantly remember their volume and vibrations lesson.
Check back regularly all year as we continue to visit students and teachers throughout Northwest ISD and offer a rarely seen look Inside the Classroom.