Rationale
Making connections is critical for all students especially those in middle school. Students that age have difficulty focusing on school and question everything. So by asking the question "Why Earth", I aim to stimulate some interest, create connections, and make science relevant to my students. I teach Physical Science to at-risk students at a Title I middle school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My school recently began a program called "looping", where the students stay with the same teacher for more than one year. So during the 2005-2006 school year, I will be teaching Seventh Grade Science, which has an emphasis on Life Science. The following year I will teach the same students Eighth Grade Science, which has an emphasis on Physical Science. If Seventh Grade is Life Science and Eighth Grade is Physical Science, what about Earth Science? Earth Science concepts are required to be taught both years in conjunction with Physical and Life Sciences. However, I admit, as do other teachers, that Earth Science topics, unfortunately, are often left out of our lessons as we concentrate on Life and Physical. As I was thinking how to develop the seventh grade curriculum based on Life Science with Earth Science as a supplement, I remembered our principal explaining that looping provides an opportunity to plan a curriculum over a two-year span as long as we teach all of the seventh and eighth grade standards sometime during the two years. So, since I had to begin fresh anyway, maybe if I found a topic of interest to my students, I could incorporate Life, Earth, and Physical Science. The opportunity to try came when I was accepted as a fellow with The Yale National Initiative. The science topic offered for the 2005 Seminars is titled Astronomy and Space Sciences. This subject could be a vehicle for integration. In college I took Science courses called Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Physics, Geology all of which seemed very different and separate from each other. However, I remembered taking a class on Oceanography; and for the first time, science really came together for me and made sense. If the study of the ocean could combine sciences, could there be such a relationship for Space Science? The answer to that question is yes and can be described in one word, "Astrobiology"
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