Sample+2.2

I chose this as my medium work sample because it has some good ideas. I also chose this because it is extremely interesting. The atom looks like one of those graphics of the earth with one quarter missing. The group had a “core”, the nucleus. They knew that here was positive and negative in the atom, but they had no idea of how these positive and negative sections interacted. They said that half of the atom was positive and half was negative. As you can see, the atom has a casing (red). When pressed, they explained that that was the casing that held the atom together. I asked, “Like how the cell wall holds together a cell?” They responded in the affirmative. I also asked what the nucleus was made up of. They couldn’t provide me an answer, but the said that they know it was important. I noticed that many of the drawings of atoms were clearly influenced by the students’ study of the cell. Virtually every group had some sort of casing that held the nucleus together. Many groups said that atoms were like cells. When pressed however they were unable to defend this assertion. This was a telling activity. I also noticed that the student were initially quite concerned about drawing models that were “wrong”. Once they got over this I learned a lot about what ideas they brought to this unit.