Here is a real-life example of fieldnotes from a while ago ..:

David R...
Tuesday, January 29, 2002
Boys & Girls Club of XXX.

Activity: Making A Battery

People Worked With:

Dan S...
Dr. Noah Finkelstein
Bill (of the Boys & Girls Club)

Kids Whom I Interacted With:

Kaysha
Cheyenne
Jimmy
David
Michael

General Site Observation:
Coming to the site, I was in a pretty good mood and not too stressed about what was going to happen. I entered into the room designated as the Homework Room at the Boys & Girls Club of San Dieguito. It was a rectangular room with shelves of books along the walls of the longer sides. There was a window used as most of the east wall showing a view of the parking lot. It was a carpeted room with six or seven tables scattered in no apparent order with one having a computer on it. When I first entered the room, it was quiet due to the fact that there weren’t any kids. After I had returned from getting supplies, about fifteen kids were in there listening to Dr. Noah and Dan Schuman explain a bit about what they were going to learn about. The kids were talkative at first, but after they started working, they seemed intent and focused on what they were doing.

Narrative:
Starting at when I returned from getting supplies, I noticed the amount of kids that were present. There were about fifteen kids and all of them were looking at Dan and Dr. Noah and hearing what they were saying. After asking some questions about what electricity was and what atoms were, Dr. Noah gave a demonstration using a Tesla coil. The kids started asking questions about how and why it worked and Dr. Noah discussed various topics that brought up. In the interaction, the subject of batteries was brought up and what batteries were made of and how they worked. Dr. Noah directed the question to me and I attempted to explain the concept but quickly found how ill prepared I was in putting in terms of analogies and experiences kids could relate to. Dr. Noah picked up the question and explained how a battery worked and what it was made of. A dry-cell battery, which Dr. Noah had cut open, started to get passed around and the idea of a positive material, a negative material, and a material, which the electricity was able to pass through, was explained to the kids. Certain kids started asking more specific questions about the battery and I was able to explain to them a bit about what they battery was actually made of and what made it work. Soon afterwards Dr. Noah told them that they were going to make their very own battery and see if and why it worked.
Setting up the kids into four groups and getting the material (a few pennies, nickels, and paper napkins) to kids was simple. Dan and I passed out the project instruction sheet that told how to use the materials to make a battery. The kids became quiet once they started doing the tasks to make a battery. In the meantime Dr. Noah filled up a coffee cup with some salt water. It was set on a table for the kids to use after they cut out pieces of napkin about the size of a nickel. They started to construct the battery (voltaic pile) by alternating both nickels and pennies with salt water-soaked bits of napkin. Most of the kids alternated a piece of napkin with a nickel, then a penny, then a nickel. A couple of the kids alternated a piece of napkin with a few nickels, and then a few pennies. When some of the kids got done with making a small pile, they began questioning, “Now what do we do?” Dan handed out a worksheet that asked some questions about the experiment. The kids were started to wander around and compare their piles with others. Multi-meters were brought out and were put to use immediately with few of the voltaic piles. Each time the multi-meter was used as a voltmeter, it was explained (by either Dr. Noah, Dan, Bill, or me) that they measured if there was any voltage made from the battery. Seeing the numbers rise, the kids also started to notice that there was difference in the amount of voltage depending upon the arrangement of the pile. The piles that alternated nickel-penny-nickel -penny produced more voltage than the nickel-nickel-penny-penny. The kids started asking why this was so and if just a nickel itself could produce any voltage. The kids started to combine piles together and seeing how much voltage they could get collectively. The different groups were going at their own pace and there was an adult right there with each of them when they asked questions.
The kids started to answer some of the questions on the worksheet and some of the questions they relayed to the adults. When one girl, Kaysha, said she was done with the worksheet, Dr. Noah suggested that I go over the answers with her and see if she understood what she wrote. The first few questions she told me the how and why the answer was reasonable, but they last two she couldn’t explain why she wrote what she did. I started to ask her questions relating to what she had done, and kept asking why this was so and how this worked. She started to answer the questions and I brought up more until she stated with confidence why the answer she wrote down was either right or wrong. The last question she wanted to skip because Dan was handing out candy to the kids that had already finished the experiment, cleaned their areas, and turned in their worksheets. I asked her just a couple questions and she changed what she had written down because of how she answered the questions. She then turned in the worksheet and excitedly took some candy. One of the youngest kids, Mike, stayed longer and kept experimenting with the batteries and how he could make it have the same voltage as the dry-cell battery. After about ten minutes, he stated that it would take him a lot of pennies and nickels to make the same type of battery. With that, he took some candy and left.

Reflections:
I just have to say it was such a wonderful time interacting with different kids and hearing their ideas. One girl noticed that he voltmeter registered voltage when one held a terminal in each hand. She said that if one screamed it would make a higher voltage register on the voltmeter. It just dawned on me that she might have taken that idea from the movie Monsters, Inc. It made me realize how much stuff I have taken as fact when I have seen it in a movie (not necessarily animated). All of the kids that I talked with seemed really eager to learn more and more about what was happening and why it was happening. I rarely see that type of enthusiasm from my peers and myself when we’re doing a lab. It makes me start to think how I can personally apply that attitude to what I’m doing in my classes and wonder if I will have more of a thorough understanding of what the content was about. I mean, it took about an hour to get the kids to understand what was going on, and sometimes it takes me hours to understand some concepts. I am becoming more and more convinced of the effectiveness of the hands-on approach and the Socratic dialogue type approach to certain areas of study. I found myself unprepared in being able to talk about the content with kids and also in having all the supplies. I think this is linked in a way to the article about having an adequately equipped kit for teachers to work off of. Without the right materials, you can become overwhelmed and not become effective in teaching the content so that the students may learn. Being more prepared and carefully considering the organization of the event will allow the kids to learn more effectively. I have to say that I am looking forward to next week and what we’re going to learn about.