Process Skills Center Rationale

Context: I created a Process Skills Project for Jeff Goodman in the Spring of 2008. I did a science project on Chromatography where the students were asked to take an overhead marker and draw a line on a coffee filter. The coffee filter was then placed into a bowl of water without actually putting the line below the level of the water. As soon as water starts to travel up through the filter, it causes the marker to run and brings out all of the different pigments in the single color. This allows children to see the breakdown of colors . The materials used in this project were coffee filters, markers, a bowl and water. Students were asked to this project with a red, green, or blue marker, and then predict what they thought would happen whenever they used the black marker and performed this same experiment.

Impact: This is an excellent experiment to do with students because it incorporates so many different process skills. It incorporates basic process skills such as observing, predicting, and communicating. It incorporates integrated process skills such as formulating hypotheses, identifying variables, experimenting, analyzing investigations and their data and understanding cause and effect relationships. This project engages students in a very wide variety of process skills and helping them with different skills that they need in order to do other experiments and question things in the science curriculum.

Alignment: I have met this standard by having my students to formulate their hypothesis, identify variables, analyze investigations and their data, understand cause and effect relationships, observe, predict, and communicate all throughout this experiment