Introduction/rationale
I really can’t recall much of science education when I was an elementary student. What I can remember was reading a science textbook and having my teacher ask questions and then send me back into the book to search for an answer. Nothing memorable about that. No wonder that I can’t recall any specific science-related learning in elementary school. Since I became the teacher, I want my students to not just recall my science lessons, I want them to start stories with the words “remember the time that we…”. That’s my goal when delivering a lesson, running an activity, or creating a curricular unit. Instill a drive to do science, not read about it. Not watch a video about it, do science. I will continue to challenge my students to ‘do science’ at Kathleen H. Wilbur Elementary school.
Wilbur Elementary School is located in New Castle County, Delaware. Wilbur is a large school hosting around 1,100 students. Our students come from diverse backgrounds. They come from mansions, motels, and everywhere in between. I will be teaching in one of the seven first grade classes found at the school. In each of these seven rooms, you will find students of varying skill levels. Some will have grown as they attended years of preschool. Some will have learned much from Sesame Street, an older sibling, or an inspired parent. Other students may never have held a book before. Due to these different pre-school experiences the students coming out of kindergarten will still be across a wide band of ability levels. Typically, my class houses between 20 and 23 students. Last year I had three more girls than boys in the classroom. My class was predominantly (42%) of African-American descent. 37% of my class identified as Caucasian. The remaining (21%) were Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern.
‘Doing science’ at Wilbur Elementary school is challenging. This is not specifically a Wilbur issue; rather the teaching of science is dictated by district priorities and pacing guides so it is a problem across the elementary schools of the district. I tend to believe that the problem spreads beyond district and even state lines. Years ago, when I began teaching in the Colonial School District of Delaware, science was afforded 30 minutes of time each day. The science block was most always placed at the end of the academic day and we educators made that work. Perhaps a decade or more years ago, the half hour at the end of the day became a shared time between science and social studies, effectively halving the time dedicated to both subjects. Educators were trusted to use this time as we saw fit provided the required learning for each area was met. The robbing of time from science education was deemed necessary to increase the amount of time spent on reading and math, which coincidentally are tied to state testing requirements. During the pandemic, science became a package of videos that we ran for the students. A package of videos really isn’t much different than when I was in elementary school as a student, and students did not get to ‘do science’. The only difference being that working out of a textbook I got the opportunity to read about science, while listening to videos is even more passive than that. In the past two years, Colonial School District has invested in new science kits which combine working through slides shows of science content with the opportunity to ‘do science’. I find this to be a step in the right direction, but it comes at a cost as we currently teach our three science units over three separate two-week windows across the span of the school year. This equates to us approximately teaching the science around 30-35 days of the school year. In a typical unit, there are a little over twenty activities that deliver the content related to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Our pacing only allows time to cover around half of these activities. The lessons we cannot get to simply don’t get taught.
I see this unit as an opportunity to supplement the science curriculum and provide my students much needed ‘do it’ time. At the beginning of our school year, we typically have several days spent on building routines and developing a classroom culture. Our pacing guides do not begin during the opening week or more of the school year. I see this time at the beginning of the year a perfect time to begin establishing the routine of learning through ‘doing’. Each of our science units spends valuable time focused on teaching ‘What Do Scientists/Engineers Do’. I intend to address those ideas through this unit. In doing so, I am instilling a routine of doing what scientists do from the early days of the school year. Not surprisingly, much of what scientist do are things that I would love to see my readers, mathematicians, and classroom citizens do also. By starting the year building the routines of the classroom to align with the routines of scientists, I will strengthen the learning of classroom expectations and also be able to shave off the time dedicated to ‘what scientists do’ from each mandated science unit. That saved time can then be used to complete more of the science content in each unit within the allotted pacing.
Each science unit taught in our mandated curriculum focuses on teaching students to do the things that scientists do while they are also engaging with content. Additionally, the curriculum links scientists to engineers so my students will engage in practices employed by both groups. Specific skills that the curriculum focuses on are making observations, reading, communicating, making models, and explaining (their ideas and findings). My students will be utilizing these skills as they learn about how we change resources to suit our needs. Furthermore, the students will be introduced to the concepts of physical changes, chemical changes, and making mixtures through the activities of the unit. To add engagement and student interest in these early science activities, we will be focusing on some elements associated with ice cream sundaes.
The overarching goal of the unit is to have students be able to identify and engage in skills related to the practices of science. The unit will begin with a brief review of the things from the kindergarten curriculum that scientists do. We will also examine a phenomenon which will be the churning of cream to create ice cream. During this activity students will be engaged in the practices of making observations and communicating to explain their ideas. During the subsequent activities, students will be reading (or having read to them) children’s non-fiction texts related to ice cream. In the unit, students will also be provided with definitions and examples of physical and chemical changes, as well as creating a mixture. Hands-on components of the unit will include turning graham crackers into crumbles which can become a topping and collaborating to determine that this process results in a physical change to the cracker. Another hands-on activity will focus on the toasting of a marshmallow. Since the application of heat changes the molecular make-up of the marshmallow, this act will result in a chemical change. Our final activity is the creation of ice cream, which we will do in class. Students will then collaborate and identify that that making ice cream is simply a mixture of ingredients, and only constitutes a physical change. Throughout the hands-on activities students will be ‘doing science’ by engaging in the practices of observing, reading, communicating, designing an ice cream maker and explaining their thinking. Following the unit, I would expect students to be able to demonstrate a basic understanding of physical and chemical changes and mixtures. It is my expectation that my students be able to translate the skills practiced in the unit across curricular lines as I will be connecting the skills of the scientist or engineer to our classroom routines. Though I expect my students to meet this goal, I do not expect them to master these routines until later in the school year once they have been able to experience using them across curricular lines with repetition. Furthermore, I will be connecting the science across curricular lines by adding social studies learning related to history and English language arts skills through reading text and responding in a grade appropriate journal.
Comments: