Green Acres School

In teaching science, one will find the young, and the young at heart, are curious beings. They naturally want to find out the answers to the mysteries of everyday life. Sixth grade science students are no different. After learning about the major systems of t4he human body, students have lots of questions. During the Human Body Expo project, these 6th graders have a chance to get answers to those questions.

• Can playing video games increase your heart rate?
• Does age affect the location of a person’s blind spot?
• Do left-handed people include more details in their drawings?
• Do people blink more when looking at a happy picture or a sad picture?
• Do taller people jump farther?

These are the burning questions that 6th grade students want to answer. During the Human Body Expo, the entire Green Acres community is invited to be the subjects of experiments that are carefully designed to try to answer these questions. Leading up to Expo day, the students conduct research, formulate hypotheses, write out set-by-step procedures, draw diagrams, and prepare enticing display boards in order to interest their potential subjects. On the day itself, there is a hum of activity. Participants can be found jumping, drawing, balancing on one food, tasting, listening, and learning. The 6th graders become a community of scientists, all focused on the task of running a fair experiment, gathering data hopefully to get closer to answers to those burning questions. The day is exhilarating!

Afterward, this community of student scientists shares results, stories, successes, and failures. They organize their data and try to make sense of it. They reflect on the questions that mattered so much in the beginning, and realize that they have more questions – more to learn.