![]() "What would happen if you added just one blue crayon to the blender?" prompts Gause, fourth-grade teacher at Rockville's Beall Elementary School. Julie Gause uses questions to help her students learn to test their options. Don Michels defines that as "putting ideas on a shelf with several other possibilities, then trying to weed one out from the other." Once an object is located, ask them questions like: How do you think it got there? How do you think you could get it down? Encourage theorizing outside the house and around the blender in the kitchen.īecoming "science literate" also means helping kids learn to consider alternatives. He suggests a game called, "What's Out of Place?" Have kids observe their surroundings to see if something is not where it's supposed to be like a sneaker hanging from a telephone wire. "Generate a joy about thinking," he says. He encourages parents and teachers to guide kids to think without worrying about correct answers. "Kids have to develop their own hunch about an idea," says Wheeler. "Questioning allows the child to correct his own understanding by thinking about it again."Ī scientific habit of mind is further stimulated by inviting theories. Rather than immediately correcting misconceptions, like Newton's thinking that a blender is the perfect place to invent a new color, science teachers now are asking, "What makes you think that's true?" says Bill McDonald, coordinator of elementary science at Montgomery County Public Schools. ![]() Then, bite back the pat answers in favor of asking the right questions. You don't have to be a scientist to think like that you don't even have to be a scientist to do that," adds the nuclear physicist and former physics professor. It's ice cubes and string telephones and wiggly worms. "It's really just bringing nature into the home. ![]() "The mistake we make with kids is calling it science,' " says Wheeler, president of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). Gerry Wheeler says we need to stop the name-calling. "Billiards and sailboats are physics, even the colors of your shirt or the leaves on the trees. Actually there is a great deal of it that is very easily explained. ![]() "If you're told something is hard long enough, you'll believe it. "By the time we're in sixth grade, we've already heard how hard physics is," says Michels, project scientist for the coronal imaging experiments on the recently recovered SOHO solar satellite. The first step is to dump some old attitudes and habits, such as thinking math and science are so hard or that you can only do well if you have a certain "aptitude." Solar physicist Don Michels says American kids have heard that negative drill entirely too long, not only from parents and teachers but from classmates and friends. Mindful of all the scientific and technological changes kids will witness before the return of Halley's Comet in the year 2061, Project 2061 aims to help all kids become "science literate." It takes not only knowledge and skills in math, science and technology, but essential "habits of mind." He currently directs Project 2061, a nationwide science education reform initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one," says research astronomer and former astronaut George "Pinky" Nelson. Last, it means biting back the pat answers and, instead, asking the right questions. It's no astronomical job, but it does take letting go of all that negative trash you've heard all your life about science and math. Teacher Says: Help Newton and other elementary-age kids develop a scientific habit of mind. Success, he believes, hinges on adding just the right amount of bright red oil-based house paint. Newton's in the kitchen putting crayons in the blender. By Evelyn Porreca Vuko September 29, 1998 ![]()
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