Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 52) ach week, the devoted members of Team LSOP rise at dawn, don their signature tie-dye T-shirts, and pile a rotating show of roughly 80 handcrafted physics demonstrations (out of more than 200 stocked in the lab) into their van, decked out with tie-dye curtains. When they arrive at a school, the joy they bring to the classroom is more than palpable. Little Shop is a boon for all who take part: Students learn about the principles of physics, meet a welcoming group of college-age role models, and have a blast (if the constant giggling and “Whoa, cool!” are any indication). The undergraduates beef up their physics skills and knowledge base by designing and building the experiments and teaching the concepts to others, as well as cultivating the patience and genuine goodwill required to hack it as a Little Shopper. Teachers welcome the respite, the chance to observe what the excitement of tactile physics can do for their students, and the opportunity to use some of those materials and ideas themselves. “As a teacher, it gets really tiring after a day of seeing hundreds of kids, but you can’t let that show,” says Nicole Bishop, a seventh-grade science teacher at Fort Collins’s Eaton Middle School and a Little Shop of Physics internship alumna. (Her internship was supported by a grant from the Eastman Kodak Company that E explicitly required applicants to become science teachers.) “Little Shop stays peppy the whole time, and positive!” Plus, she adds, “it’s great when you can bring guests into the classroom. No matter who it is, the students will pay attention more.” For undergraduates, the Little Shop of Physics is akin to a job in a research lab, except that the materials include salad spinners and ketchup packets rather than oscilloscopes or pipettes. Little Shoppers could look up recipes for experiments that demonstrate various principles of physics if they wanted to, says Brian Jones, but these recipes “won’t work for our purposes, because they use toxic chemicals and expensive equipment.” The educational bonus for the undergraduates, he notes, is that the ultimate test of any intern-created experiment is its success in the classroom. “If it goes down hard, it’s not me saying it sucked; it’s the kids saying it sucked,” Jones says. “As an educator, I really like that. It’s like a class where your only test is, does it work?” Luckily, when an experiment works, it’s obvious. It’s hard to tear kids away even for a moment to ask how a Little Shop visit compares to their typical day in science class. Several boys at Fort Collins’s Lesher Middle School, their eyes glued to a presentation of Chilly Drilly, an electricity experiment in which a cranking handle generates heat when turned in one direction and produces cold when operated the other way, complain that they have sat and listened far Soaring Sphere: too often. “Oh, Brian Jones (left) and students I guess someexplore the force that air exerts times we do a both beneath and around the sides of a beach ball. hands-on kind of science experiment,” con- ceded one, “but not really that much.” Jones sees effective teaching occurring in three basic steps: 1) engage, 2) explore, and 3) explain. First, he says, get the students’ attention—and if you need a fog machine or light-sensitive plastic beads that turn rainbow hues to do it, go ahead. Second, set them free: Show them the material and let them play. They will discover just as much or more about the topic that way than if simply told how things work. Finally, Jones says, there should be a “formal piece” to follow the exploration, so that kids can learn the vocabulary and the specifics of the material. “Too often,” says Jones, “people Positive jump right to Influences: Nisse Deen (left) ‘explain.’” demonstrates This apa magnet’s pull on proach, he iron filings. adds, is exactly what being a scientist is all about. “Students aren’t going to start by knowing what the answer to an experiment is; if you’re a scientist, you don’t know!” Jones says. “You’re doing something no one’s ever done before. So, if every lab that the kids do has a right and wrong answer, it’s really not a good training.” Still, teacher-in-training Cara Cummings admits that at the beginning of her year with Little Shop, she took a critical perspective, asking, “Where’s the learning happening? Show me what they’re getting out of this.” What she has come to understand, Cummings says, is that “before kids can go on in science, they need some prior experience, some context for how things work.” Playing with magnets, for instance, can dramatically inform students’ experience once they acquire an understanding of magnetism more formally. Jones calls this approach the development of a kinesthetic vocabulary, one made of textures, smells, and movements, representing a tangible experience in the world, rather than a single-sensory directive to digest information. Even if a kid can’t tell you precisely what it is he or she learned from Little Shop that day, says Cummings, “it’s stored in there. And it’s stored in a kinesthetic way.” Please Try This at Home The Little Shop of Physics has been run for the past sixteen years on a shoestring budget of grants and donations. Supporters include 52 EDUTOPIA SEPTEMBER 2007
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