Science Journals make art and new observations possible!
STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It is a national educational initiative that is now reaching children in younger and younger age groups. An example this week, Kids First of So Cal actively engaged in the bringing K-5th graders a beneficial set of enriched experiences that made citizen science exciting and fun!
Adding to their pending 9 week Summer Program, this last few days of working with aerosol measurements brought air particles, chemistry, and exploration into lively discussion and first time measurements from the Gym to outer space.
Soon enrichment activities will commence, with field trips, snacks, and physical training with celebrity athlete and trainer Mr. Billy Blanks, and continued sky observing! Located in the North West San Fernando Valley, there are still spots available to enroll your children for Summer and Fall 2018 programs today, please call 818-517-3651 for more information.
Kids First of So Cal's hands on science curriculum was designed by JPL/NASA/NOAA backed by grants from the National Science Foundation. The academic year ended with a flocked coconut cake continuing a tradition earlier students performed "The World Around Me" representing Los Angeles students by providing music for scientists and students from 117 countries that attended the Annual Conference in Universal City in 2015-2016. (This year the same song provided from THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS musical by William Elliott, conducted by Bo Lebo, NEO partner/director accompanied by the Roland Music Tutor and sound system using Fender Passport and Shure Microphones presented just above the LA River is headed overseas. The world around us will not just remind us of the Mole's wild adventure on the riverbank, but reflect a worldwide inquiry to make riparian habitats opportunities for discovery, participation, and documentation into field guides where students engage in observation, collaboration, and problem solving individually or in groups.)
Before elementary science in grades below fourth grade was not a priority. Today and last week, once again science came alive. With the help of the Elks Lodge 2190 Kids First Kids at The Legends Gym were able to take pictures of the skies, keep a science journal at home and play act about characters that came from CCEA in Northern Ireland. Acorn, Horse, Badger, Snail, Owl were not just characters from a Peter Alsop song but this time a starting point to understand urban rural interfaces, science through stories, and reinforce scientific concepts that led to mixing and matching materials that were white, chunky, green, granular, and tasty.
And here a balance was struck between serious science and classroom chemistry and lesson plans evolved with GLOBE Elementary partners from the entire East Coast.
Using touch, taste, sight, hang man, the hocus pocus of plastic glasses that filter light to see milk drops swirling through water, children struck a balance for mixed age groups exploring citizen science and "What's up with the Atmosphere- Exploring the colors of the sky" during an active volcanic world week and by using hands, crayons, coloring pages to introduce new concepts. This week Mel's Diner donated crayons and children were sent home to become sky observers and graciously and quietly observed 10 drawings and made a written list of observations as team members described what their fellow students might have been seeing. Words and experiences, experiences and articulation become the playground of making terms automatic, comprehension a foundation for further discovery, and interaction a new classroom pedagogy where there is no question that is unworthy and problem solving is a group dynamic.
Exploring the sky from Earth helps young scientists navigate permission to explore within a foundation of safety. The program provides new options for work and play building the brain pathways for enjoying science in combined experiences of solo, group, and individual interactions. GLOBE.gov (Elementary curricula) provides resources and tools as guidelines for mixed age groups of children, but this is a purposefully messy kind of adventure.
It is not without breakdown. The only purpose of this newly formed cadre is to nourish understanding and immerse all involved into adventures of measurement, mixing, watching, as well as sharing, discussing, writing and doing. From the "Anything's Possible!" thematic guidelines to explore the world around us, this mashup of chemistry, drama, dance, air quality observations and learning fundamental principles is cognitively rewarding and builds young minds AND includes mind-body integration. Instead of a magic trick presented to entertain, the facilitator must make connections between present conditions and elements to a virtual science transmission through an i-phone to descriptive language, measurement, and thereby articulation and literacy in real time and using guidelines only until recently reserved for the older grades.
By mixing up of hands on "citizen science", with first time experiences and data entry performance with color theory, science becomes a whole swath of sensory stimulation. All the while, the instructor must accept the ability of each child to read and write at their specific skill level or developmental age". With playfulness in mind, the lesson framework is articulated to support diverse learning in an attempt to embrace learning styles. Whether Anita or Dennis or Acorn or Owl, the sticky approach to making IT to math concepts memorable is no different than perhaps Da Vinci's efforts to observe the natural world, broken into elementary investigations. Whether by color mixing, drawing, checking assumptions, making predictions, it is more accurate by latitude and longitude and GMS, but the elements include arts integration, music, storytelling, hands on experiments, and sharing information.
Children record their data in real time, and try on making predictions in teams then check their findings. As a group, they send their collected data to NASA using consumer electronics just like today's field scientists. (see the UCAR/GLOBE Teachers Implementation Guide authored by Becca Hathaway and Lisa S. Gardiner, page 2 www.globe.gov/elementaryglobe)
Aimed at being experiential, the constructs of difficult or demanding are abandoned for new kinds of fun. The New Education Options is partnered with GLOBE to provide the program aimed at helping young students learn how to do science. Just like the text from Northern Ireland, the kids used the aerosol storybook as core supporting content for their hands-on sky watcher activities.
While inter-disciplinarily challenging, the goal is to build understanding, teach skills, evoke collaboration and hone thinking. Such classes can use state educational resources provided by LACOE's CPIN and the CDE frameworks that make adopting such early science pedagogy and technique possible.
Inquiry-based science programs and literacy activities are remarkably similar (Thier, 2002), but in a mixed group of after school K-5 there is a lively difference in skill sets presented by each member of the class or each body of students.
Just like a homeroom teacher, the facilitator must have the ability to note details, compare and contrast, predict, sequence events, link cause and effect, distinguish fact from options, link words with precise meanings, make inferences, and draw conclusions ahead of a group of "cats". This can try even the most experienced instructor because of developmental stages, inexperience with science, the group, or even lack of resources.
Although the youngsters began to explore the natural world with book characters (Simon, Dennis and Anita) they also were enhancing their vocabulary skills learning about aerosols in their environment present during the week with wind, rainy days, and pollen as well as news about volcanoes and manmade particles. (Instead of the dread for most teachers…end of the year burnout) this new class at the weeks end almost at the beginning of Summer played on into the sunset with acting out animals and learning how to say my name is ("Is mise") in honor of the pending Annual Conference in Killarney and discoverying Los Angeles is not the only place celebrating and exploring the condition of their river or using these concepts to explore and share what they are discovering whether on paper or on display boards.
Students stretched to build a context for new vocabulary words, from reading out loud, testing assumptions, writing experiment results, and looking at each others work to enrich their scientific process understanding if not yet their scientific knowledge.
To review: They expanded their understanding filters and got an A at applying the concept to theories that were not discussed in the course work in their session. They explored working in teams, made assumptions through character analysis and playacting with their peers and made new descriptors automatic. The program included chemistry, drama, art, color theory, observation, word wall and anchor charts, instructional read-aloud, pre reading the book, story making and text to self connection or text to text connection, big picture relationships. All these were anchored to Earth Science and Atmospheric observations through pictures, data collection and new concepts of reporting, measuring, math, and the physical world and its elementary factors.
The time of day, the latitude and longitude, the type of weather, the conditions are all sets of factors that no longer were taken for granted, but given the duration of a short two part session with GLOBE, observed and experienced in a more free form way.
At the end, the kids took on participating in the GLOBE Aerosol Campaign activities and used the Student Activity Sheets to make graphic representations of work in progress even if not yet finished or complete. We explored several days of keeping sunset record sheets and began to submit work to the satellites as a process of learning how scientists gather information and process what their find to make conclusions.
This was just a thumb nail on connecting the arts to literacy, the common core and next generation science standards to vocabulary building and scientific inquiry to the understand properties of light and color or understand particulates in the atmosphere or on a table. The kids are now officially amateur, but lively "Sky Observers".
It's messy though, it's noisy, it's over the top and musical. It's anything, but the same old after school classroom. It's climate experiences that no longer quadrant kids off, but engage them.
The mitts are off and kids are entranced. The earlier grades are mixing it up with terms, concepts and coordinates.
Did it all land? Maybe not this time, but by time and time again modeling how real scientists work in the field and with resources at hand…..it just might and make a real difference to individuals, families, and yes friends around the world. Threads, threats, categories and conferencing, they just experienced their first direct experience of STEM. And their response? "Can we do it again soon?" And the answer- "yes".
Radio Show:
https://media.scpr.org/audio/features/20160301_features1774.mp3?context=news&via=website&uuid=1f69b2c2-f8b9-4f05-9216-7590630b2f6e
Katie McGrath interview:
https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/03/01/58072/l-a-unified-plans-a-common-core-makeover-for-its-e/
Measurement Campaigns:
https://www.globe.gov/do-globe/measurement-campaigns
What's Longitude? Measuring and collecting data:
https://www.globe.gov/globe-data/data-entry
https://www.globe.gov/do-globe/apps
Teacher's Guides:
https://www.globe.gov/documents/10157/380993/tg_intro.pdf
Stem for All:
http://stemforall2018.videohall.com/pages/about/about-us
GLOBE books:
https://www.globe.gov/web/elementary-globe
Heads up on their older sibs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDr5AiNVcKE
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17382058/youtube-teens-preferred-platform
Dedicated to the Fall Aerosol campaign and Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month:
https://www.globe.gov/web/elementary-globe/overview/air-quality
Science through Stories… and "the world around us" theme:
http://ccea.org.uk/curriculum/sciencethroughstories
S'cool, STEM, MDGs:
https://scool.larc.nasa.gov/overpass.html
https://www.globalgoals.org/
https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/9748
https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/11596
Working with Plants and the filter concept again:
http://www.ecology.com/2016/03/31/nasa-guide-air-filtering-houseplants/
Citizen Science, examples such as 80,000 air temp measurements and more-
download the GLOBE Observer app
https://observer.globe.gov/
Natural Aerosols:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/03/americas/guatemala-fuego-volcano-erupts/index.html
Connected by Rivers….Lagan to the Danube:
https://www.britannica.com/place/River-Lagan
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g186470-d11868993-Reviews-River_Lagan-Belfast_Northern_Ireland.html
Seeing Nature:
https://www.nwf.org/Eco-Schools-USA/GLOBE/GLOBE-and-Green-STEM
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/childrens-books/100-best-childrens-books-of-all-time/
https://britishart.yale.edu/multimedia-video/26/1341