Vignette – 1st Grade ScICAM Lesson ‘Pushing on Air’
Researchers scheduled observations with classroom teachers during delivery of portions
of the science unit they had developed using ScICAM approaches. Researchers scripted field
notes throughout the observations to capture a range of student and teacher behaviors, reactions,
and classroom climate during these ScICAM implementations. The vignette below draws
directly from those observational field notes to recreate a portion of the lived experiences of the
students and teachers. The vignette captures and summarizes a lesson approximately 1 hour in
length. In this vignette, not all of the students are English Learners (EL) because, as is
appropriate, the EL students were integrated into classrooms with native English speaking
students. In general, there were no substantial differences in depth of engagement between EL
students and non-EL students. This suggested that even though there are structured languagecentric activities and tasks as part of these ScICAM science experiences, the nature and structure
of the experiences, including language elements, offered both EL and non-EL students
meaningful access to the intended learning.
ScICAM 1st Grade Lesson Vignette: Pushing on Air.
An overarching science concept goal for this lesson is for the 1st grade students to
understand that, in spite of not being visible, air has properties. The lesson begins with whole
class seated on the classroom carpeting with attention on the teacher, who takes 2 minutes to
show the students the equipment they will be using. The materials consists of plastic syringes –
approximately the size of toilet paper tubes – with a movable plunger sliding in/out of one end
and a narrow nozzle on the other, and also includes clear flexible tubing about 20 cm long that
can connect the output nozzles of two syringes.
Pair exploration. After a 2-minute introduction of the materials, students pair up and
each student gets a syringe. Their initial challenge is to explore the equipment to see what they
might be able to find out about air – they are asked to share their thinking with their partner. As
students begin using the plunger to blow air on their skin, in the face of their partner, and
experiment with rapid and slow pushing of the plunger, the teacher and classroom aide are
circulating and listening to children’s ideas and thoughts. The students are engaged, laughing,
talking excitedly, and being creative with exploration of air, including sensing how the plunger
sucks in air as well as blows it out. Students are excitedly talking and thinking out loud with their
partner throughout.
Teacher guidance after initial explorations. After some minutes, the teacher begins to
demonstrate to pairs how to attach the tubing to a syringe, and how to crimp the end of tubing so
air can’t come out. Then while one student holds the syringe and tubing, a second student tries to
push the plunger and realizes it won’t go. “Push harder” is a common suggestion, but to no avail.
Then a student tried to pull the plunger out to get a “longer running start” in pushing it in, and to
his astonishment he couldn’t pull the plunger out either! When a nearby pair notices this, they try
to do the same thing and have the same astonished looks when their own plunger also seems
stuck! The confusion and wondering quickly spread across the room. Many of the pairs latch
onto the idea that the plunger is stuck both ways – in and out – and look carefully to see if
something is stuck in the syringe blocking the plunger somehow. “Maybe a piece of wood got in
there?” and “is there gum or something in there?” are two comments overheard as pairs seek
evidence to explain their observation.
Whole class processing at midpoint of lesson. After approximately 15 minutes of this
exploration time, the teacher recalls the class attention to be seated on the carpet, and guides a
whole-class discussion of observations. Included is a continual request for evidence for any
claims made by students (e.g. the “there was nothing blocking the plunger” claim is followed by
the teacher asking, “please describe your observation and give your evidence for nothing
blocking.”) As different students responded, including some ELs who volunteered their ideas,
the class comes to a consensus that no one found evidence of something blocking the plunger,
but when the hose was crimped the plunger was stuck in place for everyone and wasn’t just one
defective plunger. The teacher asks how that was different from the first explorations (before the
hose, or before it was crimped) leading students to zero in on the crimped hose as related to the
circumstance of being stuck. One pair shares that after they crimped the host and the plunger
stuck, the person holding the hose slipped and dropped it out of her hands, and then the plunger
moved again! This leads to instant exploration by the seated students partnering up to crimp and
uncrimp the hose while the second person tries to move the plunger, confirming that a
crimped/uncrimped hose is key for making the plunger stick.
Initiating next stage of independent pair explorations. The teacher then says they will
all come back to this again later today, and to remember that today’s topic is about air. She then
demonstrates how partner pairs will connect their syringes nozzle to nozzle with the hose, and
tells them to rise from the carpet, connect syringes as shown, and then explore. By this point,
every student was deeply interested in what was going to happen – it was “strange how air could
somehow be doing this” was a comment overheard. Students quickly observed that moving
plunger A caused the connected plunger B to move as well in the opposite direction even when
no one was touching plunger B. “Magic” was a first reaction of one student, who then laughed
with her partner in acknowledgement that they both knew it wasn’t really magic. When plunger
A was pushed in, plunger B moved out. Plunger B pushed in, plunger A moved out. As they
were exploring this phenomenon, one pair happened to connect the hose to their two syringes
while both plungers were most of the way out (thereby trapping a maximum of air in the 2syringe system). When they pushed plunger A, not only did plunger B move outward, but it went
so far that it popped out of the syringe barrel with a loud sound and flew a dozen feet across the
classroom! You can imagine the new goal of every other pair when they heard and saw that.
Popping plungers. Some pairs got their plungers to ‘pop’ and some didn’t because they
didn’t trap enough air in the system when they initially connected them. The teacher encouraged
pairs to explore why, and what they could do differently to get a pop. They were also encouraged
to talk with another pair to explore together to see if one could get it and the other didn’t, which
might help them notice what they are doing differently. The entire time students were discussing
with each other in small groups of 4, trying different things such as reversing the order in which
they attached the tube, or getting a shorter or longer tube, or trading tubes with another pair, …
The teacher was circulating and engaging students in conversations, particularly asking them to
tell her what they were thinking about “air.” All of the students overheard were correctly
describing how the plunger traps air in the system, and when asked for evidence for that claim
(including by the researcher observers) often went back to earlier explorations by saying things
like, “ when I pushed the plunger down, I could feel the air moving across my skin.” They also
were able to articulate how the tube ‘trapped’ the air from coming out, comparing that to earlier
experiences of the crimped tube trapping air from coming out. But now instead of a crimped tube
blocking the air, they said that the air went into the second syringe and was trapped in there. In
the process of these kinds of discussions, most students expressed how the second plunger
moved out because the air from the first syringe was pushed out of itself, into the tube, and then
into the second syringe which caused the second plunger to go out because it was “making
enough room for the extra air.” Students were able to articulate clear evidence and communicate
their reasons for their thoughts, relying on earlier observations. Throughout all of these
explorations, the EL students were equally engaged and communicating with their non-EL
partners. In a few cases, the teacher’s assistant would offer a Spanish word (when that was the
first language of the student) for a key concept such as “air” and then ask the student to repeat
the English “air” while sometimes having the student feel blowing air on their arm. The EL
student then used the English term ‘air’ with their English-speaking partner for the rest of the
lesson.
After about 20-25 minutes of this exploration, the teacher selected two pairs of students
to bring their connected syringe pair to the front: one pair had too-little air and so the plunger did
not pop out, and the other had lots of trapped air and so the plunger would pop out. The pairs
demonstrated for the class, describing what they thought the air was doing in each case. The
class then collectively came to the conclusion of “not enough air” in the no-pop case. “How can
you fix that?” was the next teacher question. Seated student pairs then worked together with their
partner to fix that issue, and soon there were popping plungers all over the room.
Writing and drawing about their experiences. Once the excitement died back down a
bit, the teacher then used writing frames (and word boxes for EL students) to have these 1st
graders write about some key properties of air. They were introduced to words such as
“compress” and “pressure” (always using syringes to illustrate and to directly experience
between phases of writing – for example by the teacher having each pair crimp a hose and push a
little (“low pressure”) and push a lot (“high pressure”) to feel the differences.
After students used the writing frames to write about air and pressure and compression,
the final formative assessment task the teacher used was to distribute a drawing of a 2-syringe
system connected by a tube, and ask students to put an “X” anywhere there is air inside. She
stressed the word ‘inside’ and reminded students that they were right if they said air is
everywhere in this room and drew Xs all over the paper, but that for this drawing she only
wanted ‘inside air’ and not regular room air everywhere. Upon completion of the drawings,
several different students were asked to come to front and present/explain their drawing to the
class using the document projection device so all could see the drawings. Students were attentive
to their peers’ presentations, asked a few questions, and generally demonstrated that it was
normal for them to both hear their peers speaking about science and for them to listen
respectfully.
Teacher follow-up plans. The teacher shared with the researchers that the following day
her plan including having students revisit this experience using their science journals. They
would be asked to write and/or draw what they knew about ‘what air can do even if you can’t see
it’ and also ‘how do you know air is there if you can’t see it?’ which would target students’
attention on evidence. The encouragement to use drawings was strong because of the beginning
level of written language for all these 1st graders – both native English speakers and EL students.
The students had access to their work (sentence frames) from the day before, as well as a postersized document the teacher created with the class and had displayed on the wall throughout so
that all students would have that common resource to draw upon. A favorite statement overheard
from one student near the end of this lesson experience was, “Air sure is something!”