Water, Water

We finally conducted our first science experiment of the year.  Each science experiment we conduct has 5 components, they are:  question, hypothesis, observations, conclusion, and new question.  The question posed to the students was "How much of the Earth is made up of land?  How much of the Earth is made up of water?"  We discussed how we would state our hypothesis, or prediction, using percentages and how percentages must add up to be 100%.  We had a lot of different guesses about how much water is on the Earth.
Once we stated our hypotheses we began working on our observations.  Students would place their hands (with their fingers spread wide) on a spinning globe.

The globe would stop spinning once their hands landed on it and they would then tell us what each of their fingers was touching, land or water.  We created a tally chart to keep track of our results.

Once we completed our tally chart we discussed how there is definitely more water than land.  We also talked about how our results were not completely accurate so we discussed the actual amounts of water and land on Earth.

This is an example of one of the students' science notebook entries for Water, Water.