When I first think back to my early
childhood school years, science isn’t something that comes to mind. I clearly remember some things from reading
and math, and of course, I remember the fun things like show and tell, field
trips, and making friends. The longer I spent trying to remember my science
experiences, the more I began to realize that science wasn’t exciting to me as
a child. The earliest experience I can remember is from probably 3rd
grade. Our teachers got together and had some people (at that age I thought
they were scientists, but thinking back, I’m not really sure who they were)
come into our school and give a performance to all the 3rd grade
classrooms. These “scientists” conducted tons of fun experiments for us to
watch and participate in. The one I most clearly remember is the “Elephant
Toothpaste” experiment.
I remember being amazed at how the “toothpaste” kept pouring
out of the bottle. Thinking further into my school years, all the science that
pops into my head are similar fun “experiments”. I remember making ice cream in 5th
or 6th grade, or creating egg cradles and dropping eggs from our
second story science classroom in 7th or 8th grade. Once
high school started, I remember science as more of a memorizing subject,
because we had to “learn” all sorts of things such as the elements and ions in
Chemistry or math equations and formulas for physics. I was pretty positive that I didn’t complete
much science outside of school, because I was raised in a family where neither
of my parents attended college. School wasn’t something that they were able to
help me with, and it wasn’t something that they really expanded on at home.
However, after I really thought about it, I guess I did enjoy some science
related things. For example, someone in my family was always cooking something,
and I was constantly begging my mom and grandma to let me help them cook. I
loved measuring out ingredients and stirring things together until they
combined into one. I guess at the time, I wasn’t even aware that I was doing
“science like” things, because it was always fun and something I loved to do.
After
thinking about my experiences and background, it lets me reflect on the way I
want to teach science to my students. The things I remember from my school
years were the activities that were either hands on or meaningful to me.
Therefore, I want to teach my children science through hands on activities when
appropriate. I want my students to be engaged in what their learning, and I
feel that when students are active or participating in lessons, they are
engaged as well. Second, I want my
students learning in science to be meaningful to them. I want them to enjoy it
and want to learn about it because it’s something they care about. I want
science to be more of an investigation of whatever interests them rather than
simply memorizing things. I also want to
include a section in my newsletters relating to science, so parents are able to
see what their students are learning about. I plan on making tons of resources
available to my students families, incase they want to expand on things we
discuss at school. I think it’s important for students to realize that science
really is all around them all the time, and it’s not something that just
happens at school. I want students to be able to see connections between things
we learn at school and things they see at home. After my own experiences,
informing and educating parents is probably an important way to start these
connections.
I loved reading your post about all the experiments you loved to do growing up! Much like you I also loved the experiments I participated in growing up and did not realize I was doing "science like" things because they were so much fun. I thought that if what I was doing was so much fun there was no way it could be school related. Although, my school never had any scientists come to the school to implement experiments like yours did I think doing that is a great way to spark a love for science in young children. It allows students to see "elephant toothpaste" or "exploding volcano" experiments that captured their attention because they are exciting and make students question what is happening. It's kind of like a magic trick. You can't fully appreciate what you saw until you know exactly what needed to take place for the volcano to explode or for the magician to pull you card.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post! I really liked the section of your blog about what you what to do with science when you have your own classroom of students. I also want to teach my students through hands on activities and could not agree more about how engaged they are in these types of activities. I really like your idea about including science in your newsletters you send home. It is important for parents to see what their children are doing and learning at school, but also for them to be engaged in those activities at home with their children. What they do at school does not have to stop there. They should be investigating science with their children at home and allow their children to maybe teach them what they have been learning. I think everything you said about how you want to incorporate science and it extending beyond school are all awesome ideas and I think students would benefit greatly from them all!
ReplyDeleteSamantha,
ReplyDeleteAll of the experiments you participated in are interesting and seem very fun for children. I really liked how you mentioned you want science to be more about investigation instead of just memorizing things. Also, I think including a section about science in a newsletter is a great idea. This gives the parents an opportunity to see what is going on or give them ideas of what they could do with their children to expand on the project at home. I also agree with you about how it's important for students to realize science is actually all around them and it's not just something they do in school. Cooking or baking is a great example or if children love to explore outside with the environment around them. Most children love to learn about animals, which is also science. We all have our own experiences with science and these experiences are what will guide us into making decisions about how we want to teach and bring science into our classroom.
Samantha,
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your post! Our experiences with elementary school were definitely very similar in the sense that I never remembered much about my science experiments; it was more of the literacy, reading, and field trips that come to mind when reflecting on my childhood. The elephant toothpaste experiment looks really neat! It's very visually engaging and I can see how a group of elementary school students would love that science lesson. As I was a child, I didn't want anything to do with science or science lessons but I would have loved to do an experiment like that. I related a lot with you when you discussed how you want to incorporate science in your classroom one day. Hands-on learning is definitely a successful way to teach science lessons, because that’s how you remembered your elephant toothpaste project memorable so many years later. It will be challenging, but I think it’s really important for us as educators in training so start thinking about how we can help our students remember our science projects in a way that is meaningful to them. We want them to stray away from our experiences in which we only remember a few things from our elementary experiences. Thanks for sharing!