Young Scientists

Which soil will grow grass the best?

Mary, Maggie and Patrick getting some sandy soil



Caroline,  Delaney, Kaya and Brendan getting loam soil.

Clive, Oscar, Delaney, Katie, Trent and Lance gathering clay soil.

Third Grade is conducting a scientific investigation to determine which type of soil: clay soil, loam soil or sandy soil, will produce the best grass.

But what does "best" mean?  It could mean the tallest, the most, the greenest, the healthiest, the fastest... Which would the students observe?  Well, that is what we learned in this science lesson.  Each student defined their operational definition, to base their hypothesis and observations around.  Some students defined "best" as the which grew the most, another group defined "best" as the tallest and the third group defined "best" as the fastest.  Once we defined our operational definition.  We went through the steps of a Scientific Investigation.  Here Delaney and Jane explain this to you...

We listed out materials and steps - the scientific design.  Here are Maggie and Mary explaining the soils.

Then we went through the steps of the experiment.  Maddie and Oscar explain one of the first steps.

Here Trent, Caroline, Clive and Kaya explain the last few steps.

Then finally the students wrote their hypothesis, based on their operational definition. 
Here Brendan, Katie and Patrick share their hypotheses.

Angelina also shares her hypothesis.

Finally, Valerie and Lance share their hypotheses and explain what the next steps are.

In the next couple weeks we will observe the different cups of soil and seeds and determine whether our hypothesis were correct or incorrect.  Look for the blog post with that update to come in a couple weeks!