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Building language skills through science
From left: Alan Mata, 8, Russell Ruiz, 9, and Edwin Alvarez, 9, third graders at El Verano Elementary school in Boyes Hot Springs, experiment with making shadows as part of a program esigned to combine science and language skills.
BETH SCHLANKER / The Press DemocratPublished: Friday, September 3, 2010 at 5:27 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 3, 2010 at 5:27 p.m.
When was the last time a class full of third graders groaned in dismay when a lesson ended?
That was the scene Friday in Craig Madison's class at El Verano Elementary in Boyes Hot Springs where 23 students were engaged in a science experiment with shadows.
Teams of three students manipulated light and shapes, making shadows grow, shrink, move and shake. They then wrote in journals what they saw, what they learned and what questions remained to be answered.
It was a science experiment, but they were also learning language.
“Science in this case is a vehicle for (English language development). It's so mutually beneficial,” Madison said. “It's giving them a reason why they should know a meaning and why they should speak — because they have something that has a deep, rich meaning to think about.”
El Verano Elementary is in the third year of a partnership with Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry to develop and implement a curriculum that combines hands-on, inquiry-based science with English language development.
The Sonoma Valley District recently was awarded a $3 million federal grant to expand the curriculum to all elementary schools in the district. It is currently funded by a $200,000 grant from the Vadasz Family Foundation and $187,000 from the Sonoma Valley Education Fund.
Exploratorium officials say they are using the program at El Verano, where 70 percent of the students are English language learners, to develop a model that will be shared in ongoing national and international teaching workshops hosted by the Institute of Inquiry.
“Another reason why this experiment is important and why the federal government is interested is because it's so hard to teach everything you need to know when you teach everything discreetly. School time is so precious, especially for elementary grades,” said Dennis Bartels, executive director for the Exploratorium.
“The whole idea was the fact that science, in a lot of schools, is completely pushed out of the curriculum because there is no time for it, because they are on probation or caught up in (No Child Left Behind),” he said.
El Verano is in Year 5 of Program Improvement status of the federal No Child Left Behind Law and has faced associated sanctions since 2001-02.
Yet in 2009, the school and all of its subgroups, met state academic growth targets.
Teachers on campuses in Program Improvement are often limited in how each minute of each day is spent because the bulk of the academic focus becomes language acquisition and development, as well as math.
Arts, social science and science are often lost, education officials said.
The program at El Verano uses science experiments, with written log books and oral presentations, as a way to teach the English language — both conversational and academic language.
“That is why teachers everywhere are going to be interested in this,” said El Verano Principal Maité Iturri.
“Inquiry is a wonderful way to teach kids. It honors who they are, where they are and what they are thinking,” she said. “It's giving them a reason to want to know the language. Language happens in context, by having those experiences in the classroom.
“If you are given a word list, you are not going to be as enthusiastic about the word list as you are if something is happening and a snail is crawling across your desk,” she said. “It motivates them to want to learn more. It motivates their choices in literature, ‘Well, now I want to learn more about this.' Kids need to wonder.”
The teachers at El Verano will be tapped to hone their projects and lessons this year and begin peer-tutoring their colleagues across the district prior to the 2011-12 school year. The goal is to reach 30 teachers a year for the duration of the grant.
Madison, in a sentiment shared by colleagues at El Verano, said he was long ago sold on the idea of inquiry based science lessons driving students to develop stronger language skills.
In his classroom on Friday, Madison gently corrected excited students' misuse of the language. When a student said the shadow “shaked,” Madison said, “It shook?”
Lessons typically stretch over 10 to 12 days and students will be instructed to ask a basic question about shadows or friction or snails, and then come to their own answers. They then create presentations for other classrooms explaining not only what their conclusions are but how they got there.
There is focus on language throughout, said Fred Stein, science educator at the Institute for Inquiry at the Exploratorium.
“When you are planning an experiment, you are in the future tense. When you are doing the experiment, you are in the present tense. But when you are presenting, you are in the past tense,” he said.
“It's active and there is curiosity involved with it so students are pretty eager and engaged to talk about (the experiments),” he said. “There is genuine quality to the curiosity and motivation.”
Last year, a few students in Madison's class were curious about shadows and wondered aloud if they would appear without a light source. So Madison encouraged them to test their question. So they climbed into a closet, taped off any light source, and reported back: no shadows.
“What's great about it is, they are not taking things for granted just because I said it,” he said. “They are proving it to themselves.”
“Sometimes the curriculum is all about the tools but not what you are doing with it,” he said. “This is different than a teacher doing a demonstration and the kids are looking at it from afar.
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