I believe that learning takes place when teachers design learning tasks that help students acquire knowledge,  generate ideas, and solve problems. Children are inquisitive by nature. I believe children should have the opportunity to actively engage in learning through an inquiry process because knowledge is more meaningful when students discover knowledge on their own. The act of hypothesizing, investigating, and drawing conclusions helps students build confidence and gives students  ownership of their education.  In an effort to help students learn the art of working with a HYPOTHESIS, we did the following:

On January 23, 2004 we started a fun Internet project called ALPHA-BITS , hosted by Jennifer Wagner.

The project was designed for students to test a hypothesis, using a box  of Alpha-bits cereal. Students were invited to share project results with all participants by posting their findings on the  project web site.  

Each participating class needed to have 1 box of Post's Alpha-Bits in the 15 oz size! (Frosted or Non Frosted)

Each class opened the box of Alpha-Bits and divided the cereal into 3 groups. Vowels: A E I O U, Consonants: ALL OTHER LETTERS, and Final Group:  INDISTINGUISHABLE.

                      The Hypothesis Was:

# 1. There would be more  CONSONANTS in their box of Alpha-Bits than   Vowels.

# 2. That in the VOWEL grouping, E would be he most dominant!

The first thing our class did was discuss the Hypothesis, and, how we would go about  proving or disproving it.

Voting

Before conducting our investigation we voted  on what we thought our results would be. The voting was as follows:

Hypothesis Number 1 vote count

3 = More Consonants in the box

10 = More Vowels in thr box

5 = Equal Number of Vowels and Consonants in the box

Hypothesis Number 2 vote count

5 = vowel "e" would be the most dominant vowel in the box

The process:

We were each given a baggie full of alphabits. We  separated the  vowels, consonants and the indistinguishable pieces of cereal.  After observing our piles, we noticed that we should probably change our votes.

After counting all of the pieces of cereal in each pile, adding them together with our group's numbers,  and then adding our whole class' information together....our numbers did not add up right away.  We had to recount and crunch our data. We recounted and recounted until all of the numbers added up.

When we were done, we found  the first  original hypothesis to be correct!  

We proved it.

THERE WERE 1,037 consonants and 655 vowels.

This is a picture of someone from group 2 adding their numbers during our investigations!

After that we focused on  the individual vowels to see if "E" was the most dominant. We collected our  data pretty much the same way as before  except we had groups of  "a,e,i,o,u,y" instead of just separating vowels and consonants.

This time the original hypothesis was wrong! However, some of our astute 2nd graders were correct in their voting.

vowel "A". The vowel   "E" came in 5th place, not the most dominant. 

Our Thoughts:

Hypothesis Conclusion:

Our Final Count of Vowels VS  Consonants!

Hypothesis #1

 The original Hypothesis was CORRECT!

 Vowels= 655

 Consonants= 1037

 Indistinguishable = 1210

We concluded that there will always be more consonants than vowels  in a box of Alpha-Bits because there are more consonants than vowels in our  language system. 

Our individual Vowel Count

Hypothesis # 2

 The original Hypothesis was NOT CORRECT!

"E" was not the dominant vowel.

 A = 266 

 DOMINANT VOWEL IN OUR BOX

E = 22

I = 16

O = 250

U = 5      

(LEAST DOMINANT VOWEL IN OUR BOX)

Y = 97

This learning experience supports Whitefish  Bay Teaching Standard # 4

The teacher understands and uses a variety  of instructional strategies, including the use of technology to encourage  children's development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance  skills .