These booklets provide a range of “hands on” activities where students explore floating and sinking.
Adapting the resource
To highlight the importance of supporting ideas with evidence, once the children have experienced some of the activities, give them a list of True or False statements and ask them to provide evidence to support their answer. For example:
Statement
| T or F
| What’s your evidence?
|
Heavy objects always sink.
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Big objects always sink.
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All rocks sink.
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All wood floats.
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Air trapped inside things help them float.
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Students could also be challenged to come up with their own statements.
An important idea to develop with students is that we only need to produce one piece of evidence to disprove a theory, e.g., although most rocks sink, pumice floats and so this one piece of evidence means the statement “all rocks sink” is false. Science knowledge is tentative – it can change if new (disconfirming) evidence is found.