6th Grade Science Activity - Waves

Science:

A recent lesson I just taught in a 6^th grade science class was the coding of a sine wave. One of my teachers told me she was studying waves and she wanted to implement some kind of coding activity. 

Please remember that these students had no prior coding experience, so the lesson is fairly easy.

First, I gave an intro to coding and how many jobs were available, yet few to fill them. I talked about salary and all that good stuff.

Then, I gave them the reasoning for my lesson and a real-world connection. Sound waves are Audio Waves! Audio waves are perfect for students because they LOVE music!

Next, I showed them an example of an audio wave in the Garage Band Program. Of course, playing a trendy rap song.

Next, I went over a few key points from the following site:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dawate/archive/2009/06/22/intro-to-audio-programming-part-1-how-audio-data-is-represented.aspx

** Making sure I emphasized sound waves and possible careers in audio programming

Next, I had students go to the following site and create an account using their Google Accounts: http://studio.sketchpad.cc/sp/account/sign-in?cont=http%3a%2f%2fstudio.sketchpad.cc%2f

Finally, I had students just copy the following code into their Sketchpad:

http://funprogramming.org/41-A-function-that-generates-sine-waves.html

** What I did was screen shot the code, and print it out so students had to type each line by hand and not copy and paste.

Copy? You say? Yes! Because most students do not know the first thing about coding, where to even begin, or any real world connection.

Starting out with code.org or Scratch are great! But, many students will want to get their hands on the actual feel of coding.

My experience with the 120 students I taught this to last week was absolutely amazing. When they messed up typing the code and left out one semicolon or forgot to capitalize a letter, they meticulously searched through their code making sure they corrected their errors. 

 Might this transfer over to a language arts class one day when proof reading an essay?

It just might!

I have never witnessed students being so thorough! Finally, when their code was typed correctly and they saw their sine wave examples, they jumped out of their seats and cheered with excitement! 

The teacher in the room and I even had to push them out of the room to go to lunch. They didn't want to stop coding. 

Coding or copying? You might be thinking. Well, it turns out that they started researching, on their own, how to alter the code. For example: changing the background color, making the sine waves appear differently, etc..

This is indeed the beginning of something great!