A Discovered Passion in Teaching - Part 1
—— A precious experience as an online science teacher
Mar. 2020 - Present
As our company transitioned to an e-learning platform, my responsibilities centered on online course development. I designed and implemented several curriculums for children between the age of 6 to 12, including <Introduction to Programming>, <Introduction to Python>, and <Hands-on Science Experiments>.
In over 2 years, I already taught more than two hundred students (except for weekly open class) and gradually established a good “friendship” with many children with my warmed and playfulness heart. Teaching children may be the most joy-able thing I discovered so far since graduating.
As the name suggests, this course is focusing on doing small science experiments with go-to kitchen-used materials(mainly), facing children of 7 - 12-year-old. In our five academic terms from mid-2020 to mid-2021, I independently developed over 40 topics of science experiments and implemented them in almost 100 lessons, each lesson lasting 1 hour.
Course Target
7 - 12
Duration
mid 20 - mid 21
Num. of Topics
40x
Num. of Lessons
100x
Where does my inspiration come from?
My inspiration comes from the Museum of Science and Industry, when I step inside that magnificent museum, I was deeply impressed by its interactive exhibits such as Avalanche Disk, Tsunami Tank, and Tornado Tower.
Children can learn these concepts of physics from observation to interaction.
Museum of Science and Industry, Exhibition of Wonder Is All Natural
The motivation
During the pandemic period, students have to sit in front of the screen and learn hour by hour, day by day, and most of them already got bored of this tedious learning process.
The first class
Given these circumstances, I designed my first lesson <Some Facts about Coke> for our weekly open online class in Mar. 2020.
I used Coke as an example to illustrate the triangle relations of humans, food, and energy, as well as the ingredients of original and diet Coke, along with three mini experiments including “Coke Explosion”, “Volcano Eruption”, and “Colorful Lemon”.
Here are some example slides.
Students must prepare all required experiment materials before attending this open class and should follow my procedures step-by-step doing these experiments in front of the camera. Any children under 8 must be supervised by their parents.
Needed Materials(Example):
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Vegetable Oil, any
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Vitamin C Effervescent, 2 tablets
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Lemon, one
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Two Spoons
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Two Glasses
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Two Plates
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Diet Coke, 2 bottles
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Regular Coke, 1 bottle
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Baking Soda, any
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Food Coloring, any
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White Vinegar, any
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Dish Soap, any
The result of first class
The result for the first class is significant! Student performance is very active, even some quiet and timid students raised their hands for asking my help. I know in the current e-learning market, there is no such experiment course designed for young students, therefore after this open class, I started to design the full curriculum systematically.
Some students’ work
Topic
Why the Leaves Turn Yellow in Autumn
Experiment
Paper Chromatography - pigment separate
Topic
The Science in Food
Experiment
Make tofu and milk curd
Topic
Why Alcohol and Soap Can Keep Us Away From Bacteria?
Experiment
Bacterial cultures on apple slices
Topic
How is the Rainbow Formed?
Experiment
Craft Newton’s Disk
Topic
Why Alcohol and Soap Can Keep Us Away From Bacteria?
Experiment
“What a beautiful painting”
Topic
Acid, Bases and PH indicator
Experiment
Elephant toothpaste
Topic
Discover the Density
Experiment
Multi-layer liquids
Topic
Acid, Bases and PH indicator
Experiment
“Make a Moon”
And some slides demo
In this section, I will take <The Science of Soap> as the example to illustrate how I design a topic of hands-on science experiments class.
“The Science of Soap”
This course is aiming for illuminate children’s curious questions about daily things around them, basically, every topic is different and highly related to our life.
When I started with a new topic, I will stand in the children’s point of view to think about the problem, I called this approach as heuristic research. For example,
“If I were a kid …”
“Why the soap can wash away the oil from our hands?”
“Soap bar and liquid detergent, are they the same?”
“Why the soap can produce bubbles?”
After I got all information, I started to design teaching procedures along with mini-experiments, I wish students can learn something from the DIY experiments, not from my slides.
I usually throw a question and immediately start a hands-on experiment in which students should follow my steps doing the same way at their home. Here are my teaching procedures,
Let students do the first experiment to compare water and oil in physical properties. Do they separate? Which one is on top?
Throw a question - “How can we mix water and oil together?”, let them discover by adding liquid soap into the glass.
Use the illustration to explain why soap can mix water and oil.
Let students do the second experiment for making soap bubbles on the dish and throw the second question - “why soap can produce bubbles?”.
Use the illustration to explain that question as well.
Let students do the third experiment, this one requires a cup of cold and warm water, to compare in which cup the soap can be dissolved faster.
Explain why warm water is better for cleaning our face.
Let students do the fourth experiment to make instant snow using the soap bar. This experiment explains the other main ingredient of soap - water (even if we can’t see it), and also illustrates why cupcakes and cream have such foam structures.
Next, the fifth experiment, used food coloring, milk, and liquid soap to design a colorful dish “painting”, to make students think about why food coloring is repelled when tipping a drop of liquid soap on it.
Brought the last question - “How to make traditional soap? ”.And demonstrated the cold process of making soap (Saponification).
Prepared required materials, rehearsed all experiments, and modified experiment procedures on teaching slides if necessary.
Make a experiment materials’ list, send it to parents one week before of the class, so students’ parents could have enough time to prepare all kinds of things.
