Demographics
J.H. Gunn Elementary School is a suburban elementary school with single grades K-5. It is located in Charlotte, North Carolina in the urban school district of the Charlotte/Mecklenburg School System, which is the twenty- third largest in the nation. The school has a multicultural population of 730 students and is an English as a Second Language designated site. The ESL Program serves approximately twenty-five percent of our student body. Seventy-three percent of our students receive free or reduced lunch making us a Title I school. The school has been an integral part of the J.H. Gunn community, an integrated medium-low income neighborhood (African American, Hispanic, Caucasian and others), for over 75 years. Our school reaches out to the surrounding community in many ways. Scouts, Parks and Recreation, and a large After School Enrichment Program use our facilities after school hours.
I am the full time Science Facilitator at our school. I have created a Science Lab from a classroom. The Lab has 6 tables for group experiments and cooperative working groups as well as a Media Viewing Space (carpeted area where a computer connected to a LCD, overhead and TV are located). The Science Lab experience is considered a "Special" on the same level as Art, Music, Media, P. E. and Computer classes. The "Special Area" teachers work with all the students from each of the five grade levels so that that grade level teams have a daily planning time. Every student in the school comes to the Lab during the school year for a forty-five minute lesson one time a week, at least for a semester, many for the entire year depending on the Master Schedule.
I teach Science using the North Carolina Standard Course of Study (See Figure 1) and appropriate teaching methods, resources and strategies related to designing effective science learning experiences for my students. For most lessons I use the Five E's (Explore, Engage, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate) in planning interactive lessons. I have discovered many excellent interactive science web sites where students can perform virtual experiments. Viewing these web sites as a group has had a real impact on student learning because most of my students are lacking in life experiences giving them background knowledge to perform their own discovery experiments.
Although I am a teacher of Science I consider myself first a Character Educator. I have served my school as the Character Education Coordinator for four years. During this time I saw the power of Service Learning Projects. For many of our students Service Learning is the first time that they have looked outside of their own world to help some one else. I have experienced first hand the joy on their faces as they understand the importance of helping others and seen how this kind of learning has given real meaning to the student's education.
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