Starting Early

   To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

We start Science in the early childhood years to channel and build on children’s natural predilection for discovery and their indescribable joy in finding out about how the world works. Today an earthworm; tomorrow, perhaps, a cosmic wormhole.

Young children are natural explorers and natural investigators.  When children are introduced to science early on as an extension of their wondering and question, it becomes fun and natural.  When science is introduced as experiences and experiments, it stays fun and natural.  Kim Saxe, one of the founders of the Design Thinking movement, has recently tweeted about the experience of awe and the role awe in motivating and renewing our students and ourselves.  This is the way science should be, especially in the early years.  The impulse to want to know what something is, how it works, and why it works is at the heart of science.  Of course, as you learn more and dig deeper into how the natural world works, it takes more skill and more effort to find increasingly more subtle answers to our more complex questions.  And, we need more complex tools and techniques to find these answers.  And it takes more work, more effort, and more grit to learn to use these tools that are necessary ferret out the answers we seek.  But, if we push the tools and techniques ahead of the awe, we kill the natural curiosity of our students.

Jason Silva gets at this same idea in his amazing video Awe.

See this YouTube video!

 

It All Starts Here!

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A few years ago, as I was sitting in my empty-for-the-summer lab, getting ready for the return of my students in a week or so, I heard a voice from outside my door.

"I've just got to go in here!" she exclaimed. A young woman popped through the door, looked around and spotted me about to ask her how I could help her. "I used to go to school here," she explained. "I can't believe how much it looks the same."

I've been teaching science at this school for ten years at that time and I knew she wasn't one of my former students. "You must have had Molly for Science class," I offered, knowing this was a safe bet since Molly had taught here for more than thirty years.

"Yes," she brightened. "How is Molly?"

"She's retired to Oregon and spending lots of time with her grandchildren."

"You know, it all started here," she marveled, spinning around and looking intensely, trying to take in the whole room. "I remember learning about trees and flowers, studying crayfish, working with colored solutions and rocks in this room. Now I'm studying for my Ph.D. in biotechnology at Penn!"

We talked some more about what was the same and what was different, and what she remembered the most. She happily agreed to come back when she was in town to talk to my current students about her path from sitting in this lab doing many of the same hands-on investigations my students do now to working at the highest levels of science in a scalding hot area of research and development at one of the world's premier universities.

The room seemed even quieter and emptier when this dynamic young alumna, our own nascent scientist left and I was left again to my thoughts. Most school days in my lab are filled with enthusiastic kids and the wonder of finding things out through hands-on inquiry. Day to day progress is difficult to judge, however, and some days seem especially slow. Social chatter and just plain messing around sometimes seem to drive out deep scientific thinking.

But, after all, they are teens and tweens who come through my lab. Who can tell what learning will stick and what will fall away, which seminal ideas land on sand, which on rocky soil, and which on fertile ground?

Most of my students will never be scientists, but all of them will be consumers of the products of science and technology, as well as citizens dealing with the impacts of biotechnology in medicine and food production, the impacts of information technology on nearly everything, and the impacts of humans on the environment and global climate change on absolutely everything and everyone. Everyone needs a toolkit of basic science knowledge and the tools to think critically about the scientific questions and research that permeate our lives.

What teachers do, does make a difference, I mused. It all starts here.

Southwest Archaeology with Kids

Our 5th graders study the archaeology of the Southwest during the spring semester as part of our integrated studies. As their science teacher for a dozen years, I worked along with my colleagues in Humanities, Math, Art, and Technology to help our students learn about the history and culture of the ancestral Puebloan people. In addition to learning about the daily life and history, the 5th graders learn about the geology of the Southwest and the science of archaeology.    We spend a week at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, CO, a working archaeological center with a residential education program.  They have an amazing hands-on curriculum to introduce students to archeology and the ancient Puebloans of the Four Corners region.

We begin the week learning about the major periods in history of these Puebloans through handling and learning to classify characteristic artifacts from era.  As you might expect, in learning about another culture and how it developed, our students reflect on our own culture and values.  Students visit archaeological sites from each of the major periods and become familiar with the hallmarks of each.  As a way to study the lifestyles of the Puebloans, our students learn how to make fiber cordage, attempt to start a fire with a bow drill, and practice “hunting “with a rabbit stick and a spear-thrower called and atlatl.  They also get to try on replicas of Puebloan clothing, learn games the Puebloan children played, and weave on an upright loom.  

In the archaeology lab, they learn about techniques used by professional archaeologists to find sites, unearth artifacts and entire villages, classify the artifacts, analyze data to answer questions, and archive the artifacts.  Students see how archaeologists apply geology, chemistry, physics, and biology in their investigations, using simple tools, such as small brushes and dental picks to digital tools and satellite images in modern archaeology. 

 This NYT article, ScientistTries to Connect Migration Dots of Ancient Southwest, discusses University of Colorado archaeologist Steve Lekson's theory of the linkage between Chaco Canyon and Puebloan sites in Mexico as part of his unified theory of Native American population movements. I used this article to help students get a bigger picture of the Puebloan migrations, and some historical context, as well as perspective on one of the current controversial ideas in the science of archaeology.  Our students love this trip and learn so much.  Even after a dozen years, I always find something new.