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Lessons From the Classroom
Barbie Bungee Revisited and Better Than Yours Class Lists
This year I've taken away a lot of my step-by-step instructions for the Barbie Bungee activity that I'd posted 1.5 years ago. They get no handouts, only some verbal instructions:
[Pointing to the ceiling] See that gob of tape up there? That's leftover tape from previous years where Barbie had taken her jump. It should be at 3 meters up. Well, a small ruler will come out perpendicular (somehow) to that pole where the tape is, and that's Barbie's jumping platform. The ruler is like her diving board.
The goal is to give her the most thrilling jump — her head dips as close to the ground as possible without actually touching it. Yes, her hair hitting the ground is fine. Her jump line is made of rubber bands tied together with slip knots. (Why must we use brand new rubber bands?) You'll work in groups of three, says Instant Classroom.
So, aside from the Barbie doll, what do you think your supplies will be?
Rubber bands! How many? Lots! A hundred!
Try six. Actually seven, but one must be completely wrapped around her ankle, like this.
With only 6 rubber bands, your job is to figure out how many more rubber bands she'll need for the most thrilling jump from 3 meters.
Can we weigh her?
This is like the Vroom car!
So we have to graph, then do the extension thingy. Extrapolate. Oh, the equation is in slope-intercept form!
(We've been looking at word problems and writing linear equations that would be more appropriate in standard form or in slope-intercept form.)
Your team will have until the end of tomorrow's class time to submit your number of additional rubber bands you'd want.
For easier management of the rubber bands, I get them ready in bundles of 7, one to each group for testing and data gathering, and in bundles of 10 and extras to give out as requested on jump day.
I liked the messiness of their initial work. (I didn't give a handout or many instructions for Vroom! either, and they did fine.) Kids doing whatever they think they should do, measuring incorrectly, plotting ill-looking graphs, talking and criticizing one another. I was debating when I should intervene, but it was good for me to just observe and listen in.I waited until the next day to point out stuff. Actually I never told them what they should do, I tried instead to ask them how something should be done. I don't think one single idea came from me — someone always had the answer I was hoping for, so all the "correct" ways to do things came from them. My phone apparently didn't have enough memory after this one clip. It was fun. (One kid also brought up that this was like the Stacking Cups lesson that we did.)
This might seem to you a DUH! share, but I only thought of it earlier this year, and I feel like I invented the paper clip. We all have class lists, of course. But is each of your class lists on a strip of paper like this? And in different colors? I didn't think so.
I have semi-thick stacks of these to use for just about everything. What a pain to write down kids' names for this and that. Instead I just pull out a strip and highlight so-and-so's name and note the reason.
I staple one set of strips together, put a date on it, and kids pass it around to each other to sign in for after-school help — they just need to put their initials next to their names.
Those who need to come in at lunch recess get their names highlighted on the strip.
I use it as a hall pass when I need to send 2 to 3 students at a time to the library.
I highlight a kid's name whose parent I need to contact, then use the back of the strip to make notes from our conversation.
It's a great tally sheet for whatever during class.
Endless uses.
Barbie Bungee
I bought a 1-lb bag of rubber bands for my Barbie Bungee activity today.
We should have done Barbie Bungee earlier in the year while learning linear equations and lines of best fit, but better late than never. My collection of Barbies could use some refurbishing work — they get used so much each year for this activity and for our lesson on proportions.
OBJECTIVE: Create a bungee line for Barbie to allow her the most thrilling, yet SAFE, fall from a height of 3 meters.
I randomly assigned students to groups of three. Each group got their own Barbie and 7 new same-size rubber bands. My instructions:
Measure Barbie's height. Record this as rubber band length of 0.
Connect 2 rubber bands with a slip knot.
Wrap one of the two rubber bands tightly around Barbie's ankles.
Drop Barbie, holding the rubber band level with the meter stick.
Record Barbie's fall using the lowest point her head reaches in centimeters. This number is your rubber band length of 1. (The rubber band around her ankle is not counted in the length of the line.)
Add another rubber band, drop Barbie, and record. Do this for a total of six rubber band lengths.
Measuring: They quickly went to work. (We're lucky to have good weather here pretty much year-round because I need some students to be outside whenever we do projects like this — they need to spread out to do the work.)
Graphing: The groups graphed rubber band lengths vs. distance of fall. Then they drew in the line of best fit. From this line, students predicted the number of rubber bands for Barbie's bungee line that would be thrilling enough for her 3-meter jump without cracking her head open!
Once groups made their prediction — written on their papers and on the board — they may not change it. I had taped a small ruler to that rod to mark the 3-meter height. I can't have students on the ladder, so that's me getting ready to drop a Barbie. (The numbers on the left were their initial guesses before doing anything else.)
This was a blast!! I had two kids lying on the ground with meter sticks to watch and measure Barbie's initial plunge; they were our judges. We clearly had a winning jump when one group's Barbie came within 2 cm of the floor. They asked if they could get a second chance, so all 10 dolls had another jump after adjusting the number of rubber bands on the bungee line.
What I heard around the room
I noticed the centimeters went up by 10 on average.
Her height is the y-intercept.
Nine rubber bands is approximately 100 cm, so we need...
Stop stretching the rubber bands, you're gonna ruin our estimate!
Each meter stick is 98 cm. (His two teammates did not say anything when they heard this!)
I have to re-do our graph. I stuck it too close to the top, and the line of best fit has nowhere to go.
You're not supposed to connect the dots!
This was so much fun!
Oh, I didn't realize how stretchy the rubber bands got. (To which another student said, "Hello, it's rubber."
Ken is heavier [than Barbie]. We forgot this.
Hair centimeters! She was that close!
Notes
Barbies are Barbies. My kids are used to handling the dolls, a few of them have no clothes on (I got many of them on eBay). But I start every lesson with my usual warning that if I see anything remotely suggestive or derogatory done to the dolls, the student would be sent to the office and not be able to return to my class until I spoke with his/her parent. There has never been a problem in the last 8 years. The same applies to the rubber bands.
Playing with Barbies
I got most of my 20-plus Barbies from eBay and use them well. I use the Barbies with my 6th graders when we study proportions. I use them for Barbie Bungee with my algebra students during linear equations.
The students work in groups of three, one Barbie per group. They take various measurements of Barbie from head to toe; then, they take the exact measurements of someone in their group. (I did this activity with math teachers, and some teachers were concerned that students may not wish to be measured. I've done this activity for the last seven years, and if anything, the kids want to volunteer to have their measurements taken.)
I then assigned each group one measured body part—Group 1 has "feet," Group 2 has "waist to ankle length," Group 3 has "head height," Group 4 has "legs," etc. Students now take the ratio of their group's assigned human body part to that of Barbie's. Students then multiply all of Barbie's measurements by this ratio, and they sketch their "humanized" Barbie based on these scaled-up numbers.
Below is one of the ten posters that will go up in our school's cafeteria.
What my kids wrote in their reflections on this activity:
The Barbie was weird. Ms. Nguyen was right, Barbie does look like a freak in human form.
We did a life-sized Barbie and my group got "feet," so that meant she was super tall.
Also that Barbie project is very fun but creepy at the same time. Barbie was freakishly disproportionate.
Our Barbie's feet were REALLY small.
We did a really fun project with Barbie. I learned a lot about proportions because of it.
People were really creative with their Barbie; our Barbie's name is LOLA! She is cute.
We work on Barbie and it was weird because Barbie is so weird. My group messed up and now Barbie is messed up, it doesn't even look like Barbie.
We had an insane task! We had to see what Barbie looked like in human form and she's a FREAK! It was pretty fun to do though.
Barbie was a hard, hard, hard challenge. She is so tall if we did her legs for our body part it will be so long.
Updated 02/09/12
