Rationale
Being a kindergarten teacher is wonderful. Five-year olds arrive to school with tears in their eyes because mom isn’t in the next room over, but those tears fade and their inquisitiveness takes over. Kindergarten students love school, they love to learn, they are curious about everything, and they lose their minds over superheroes. Superheroes equal engagement. Highly engaging content comes with a massive boost in the relevance of a lesson. When students find themselves connected and caring about a lesson, the learning of the material comes easier. Engaged students are less likely to lose focus, or have a behavioral issue during learning. And I believe, engagement also aids in the retention of new information.
Much like two and three-year olds, kindergarteners love the word ‘why’. Their inquisitiveness and curiosity drives them to notice things and wonder about those observations. They should absolutely love science class, however science classes can be very hit-or-miss ¾ not because of the students but because of its presentation. Sadly, in elementary schools around the country, reading is king, mathematics is the queen, and science and social studies are probably like dukes or barons or worse. They really do not measure up, and you rarely hear about them. Science gets taught for about 30 minutes a day in my school. But that does not happen everyday because that precious half hour also houses social studies too. Science education also suffers because the content feels very disconnected. I start the year teaching about trees and plants. I teach about the types of trees, their structures and the functions of those structures, and their basic needs. We also explore how trees change throughout the seasons. At some point in the fall, the trees take a back seat and our focus shifts to the weather. We learn about different types of weather and we track our local weather throughout the school week. We also touch on the Sun a bit as we explore patterns in our weather daily and throughout the seasons with regards to temperature. At some point in the winter (when weather has great potential to be exciting in Delaware) we put weather on the shelf next to our tree unit and begin to study force and motion. Our units are very disjointed. So the question is, how do I increase the level of excitement for science class? How do I make it relevant to my students? How do I keep the kids engaged and excited for our science lessons? This sounds like a job for… a certain Superhero that my students love and have faith in. Not the one with the reindeer, the one with the cape.
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