Edutopia - February/March 2008 - (Page 54) Whisk Kids Math and science are really, truly everywhere. They’re in everything we do. One place is in cooking. The four walls of my science lab show physical science, earth science, and life science, and this wall, the fourth, has a big mural that reads “Let’s All Cook.” The goal is to get the kids to see the chemistry in cooking and the math in recipes. Shelfishness Some of the stuff is mine, but the kids have taken over. This is one shelf out of ten that are full of stuff. It’s really become their collection of cool science objects they find. That means they’re getting stoked about science. They’re looking around and seeing science in their own world and then bringing it in to share. They’re proud of that collection because it’s theirs. Lunch Bunch We’re trying to fill their world with math and science. And we’re trying to give them as many opportunities and as much enrichment as we possibly can. So we have a couple of things called Lunch Bunch. The kids sign up, and they come during their lunch or recess period. They say things like, “Mrs. Stellema, we need string,” and pretty soon the string is going from one end of the room to the other, it’s tied to the drawers, and they’ve got little gizmos sliding down the string. It’s informal; it’s free exploration. It’s the free, unstructured time that kids sometimes need to discover and play. Room ToLearn: Math and Science Rock Photography by Stephen Collector Two years ago, Ryan Elementary School, in Lafayette, Colorado, celebrated its increased emphasis on math and science. Parents and kids painted the walls of the laboratory, and a muralist donated her time to add planets, molecules, rolling pins, and rockets. Now, the school’s informal slogan— “Math and Science Rock!”—is invoked at the start of assemblies, and the words have even been sewn onto a banner that hangs in the laboratory, the domain of teacher Janet Stellema. From her eclectic surroundings, Stellema, also the school’s math and science coordinator, delivers the kind of hands-on opportunities that stoke the students’ passion for math and science.“If they leave elementary school thinking,‘I’m a scientist, I’m a mathematician, and math and science rock,’ then we’ve met the goal.” —Alexei Bien 54 EDUTOPIA FEBRUARY/MARCH 2008
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