Making Salt Dance

Type of resource: Blog, video, website

Web address

Language: English

Description

Making Salt Dance: Investigating how eardrums work

Scientific concept introduced

How sound works: the eardrum and vibrations

Creative and critical thinking

Critical Thinking:

1.Explanation

2. Prediction

3. Inference

Creative Thinking:

1. Imagining

2. Curiosity

3. Making

4. Self-expression

Mathematical reasoning

–

Scientific thinking

1. Questioning
2. Observing
3. Predicting
4. Explanation
5. Testing
6. Comparing
7. Drawing connections

Learning how to learn

1. Following guidelines
2. Active listening
3. Self-efficacy in learning
4. Reflection on learning

Additional

1. Expressive language
2. Skills in cutting with scissors
3. Safety in the kitchen
4. Cooking skill of pouring
5. Communication
6. Literacy – vocabulary development
7. Collaborative skills of turn-taking

Making Salt Dance

Overall aims

● to enable pupils to investigate how their eardrums work
● to develop pupils’ skills in listening and following instructions
● to develop pupils’ cooking skill of pouring
● to develop pupils’ skills in turn-taking
● to develop pupils’ skills in observing and predicting
● to develop pupils’ skills in drawing connections
● to develop pupils’ expressive language skills through poetry

Vocabulary – keywords should be understood

Ear, eardrum, sound, loud, soft, volume, vibrations, salt, salty, waves, balloon

Expected learning outcomes (operational aims)

The child will be enabled to:
● follow instructions for the investigation
● explain the function of the ear
● identify sounds as loud or soft
● make observations during the investigation about the relationship between sound and
how the salt moves
● identify characteristics of salt
● practice the skill of pouring
● explain why very loud music is bad for our hearing

STEM skills – to which the learning unit is related to

CORE STEM SKILLS

● Questioning
● Making
● Observing
● Predicting
● Explanation
● Testing
● Inference
● Curiosity
● Imagining
● Comparing
● Drawing connections

ADDITIONAL SKILLS

● Following guidelines

● Active listening
● Self-efficacy in learning
● Cutting with scissors
● Safety in the kitchen
● Cooking skill of pouring
● Self-expression
● Communication
● Literacy – vocabulary development
● Reflection on learning
● Collaborative skills of turn-taking

Teaching methodologies/activity outline

Teacher Note: This experiment demonstrates how the eardrum works and how sound is made up of vibrations, or sound waves.

Introduction:
1. Ask pupils to identify their ear by pointing to it. Elicit pupils’ understanding of what the ear does, eliciting that its main function is to help us hear sounds.
2. Ask pupils to close their eyes – clap your hands loudly once and tap your fingers gently twice. Ask pupils to describe both sounds (loud/soft).
3. Explain that we have an eardrum in our ear which helps us to hear sound and that they are going to make their own eardrum to explore how sound works.
4. Inform pupils that they are going to use salt for this investigation. Elicit pupils’ knowledge of salt and salty food, for example, we use salt to season food; crisps, bacon and pretzels taste salty.

Activity:
(Ask pupils to work in groups of 4, reminding them to take turns).

Materials: (per group)
● A plastic cup
● A balloon
● Table salt
● Scissors
● A speaker (or some device which will produce sound)

Instructions:
Ask each group to do the following:
1. (Adult supervision required) Carefully use the scissors to cut off the neck of the balloon.

2. Then stretch the balloon over the rim of the cup. Explain to the pupils that the balloon is like the eardrum – it is very thin like the stretched balloon.
3. Once the balloon is secure, each pupil takes a turn gently pouring some salt on top of the balloon, being careful not to spill any.
4. Turn your speaker on to play music at a low volume. Then take turns placing the speaker near the balloon. Test with different levels of volume. Observe what happens – look at how the salt moves.
Sample questions: Why do you think the salt is moving? (The sound makes the salt move) / What do you think will happen if we stop the music? (The sound has stopped and so have the vibrations, so the salt stops moving) /What do you think would happen if the music was louder/quieter? / What do you think would happen if we kept turning the music up louder and louder? (The salt would all bounce off the balloon because it’s so loud. That’s why listening to really loud music is bad for our hearing and it can cause damage to our eardrums).

The Science of Sound
Sound travels in waves, making objects vibrate. Like the balloon, the eardrum is a flap of skin that is stretched tight like a drum. Sound waves travel through the ear and when they hit the eardrum it vibrates. This sends a message to our brain to let us know we hear a sound.

Conclusion:
1. For this activity pupils can work individually, in small groups or as a class. Ask them to create an acrostic poem about SALT or SOUND based on what they have learned.