Today the students were given hands-on experience in observation. First they started by identifying all the differences they could find in beans. They used all their senses (except taste) to see if they could group the beans.
Next they were given an analog and a digital scale and they used them to identify the mass of the beans. They looked for reliability between the two types of scales.
Since measurement is an important part of research, this mini-lesson was a good way to reactivate their past learning experiences.