As part of a unit on air and aviation, students were to investigate the three important properties of air that helps airplanes fly, which are mass, temperature, and pressure. This lesson focused on the property air pressure, and an investigation was conducted to answer the driving question: “Does air have pressure?”. The investigation is consisted of filling a water bottle with water, poking several holes into the bottom of the bottle with the lid closed and hold the bottle by its lid so is to add pressure to the bottle, and finally open the lid of the bottle. Students were asked to observe what happened to the water in the bottle when its lid is on and off. The investigation was carried out in a whole class setting, and individual students were asked to come up and poke holes in the water bottle, and then a whole class discussion was conducted to share their observations with the entire class. The purpose of the investigation was to let students see that air has pressure, and the air pressure was what forced the water out of the bottle.
The lesson is somewhat scripted because I had to follow the protocol of my mentor teacher, but the students were all engaged in observing as well as the class discussion even though they were not actually doing the experiment themselves. The experiment is designed with three investigation questions for the students to answer, all leading up to the statement that air has pressure. During my demonstration of the experiment, I ask students questions every step of the way to tell me what they notice is happening to the bottle and the water in side it, and make assumptions of what the air may be doing to the water inside the bottle to get them thinking about the pressure air puts on it. At the end of the lesson, students all jotted down in their journals of their observations after discussing their findings to group members while thinking about the questions I asked them during the experiment.