Building, Moving and Drumming Make Science Learning Fun for MVSD’s Kindergarten-2nd Grade Summer School Students

Mountain View School District’s Kindergarten through 2nd grade summer school science classes focused on building, moving and drumming, providing students with fun and engaging hands-on learning. 

Teachers utilized the 5E Model of Instruction where students Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate as they study scientific concepts.  Over the four-week summer program, the science lessons incorporated language arts and math, enabling students to build their vocabulary, reading, math and writing skills while completing the interactive science activities. 

As part of the Build It! Unit students to learned about famous buildings throughout the world, and selected a favorite famous building and built a model of it using a variety of materials such as boxes, paper bags, cups, craft sticks, toothpicks, tape, glue and more.  The students were excited to build their models which included the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 

They also learned about forces and motion during the Move It! Unit, experimenting with high and low ramps, changing surfaces and friction, and how a toy car moves down the ramps.  They had fun exploring the effects of forces on cotton balls by blowing on them through straws gently and with great force across their desks.   Their favorite activity in the Move It unit was helping Newton the dog (a toy dog taped to a toy car) get into his dog house using all of their learning to build ramps with fabric for friction and weighted containers. 

“I’m happy because my ramp got Newton into his house,” said Sophia.  “I had to make it high so the car would go down it fast.”

The Drumming Unit incorporated learning the parts of a drum, drum sounds, rhythm, patterns, vibrations and sequencing.  The classrooms were exploding with sounds as the students played the drums, following specific rhythms.  A highlight of the lesson was constructing and designing their own drum. 

“Learning about drums was fun,” said Anthony.  “I liked playing them with my friends.”

“Our students did an amazing job this summer and were very excited about their science lessons,” said Alicia Raygoza, Teacher on Special Assignment.  The students, as well as our teachers and support staff had a lot of fun completing the lessons and engaging in the hands-on learning.”