Newsclippings and Press Releases

News Clippings

Science Grant

Thanks to a four-year $3.3 million National Science Foundation grant, the district's inquiry-based Valle Imperial Project in Science will be offered to every school in the Valley.

In late May the district held an orientation for principals of county schools in preparation for a summer teacher training workshop. Teachers from around the Valley have been invited.

"Our goal is to build within teachers the capacity for inquiry-based teaching," said Sarah Quinn, project coordinator. She said the science program incorporates a number of other disciplines into its curriculum - specifically, development of writing skills and mathematics.

Students maintain science notebooks, starting in kindergarten. In them, they record observations, data and conclusions from their experiments. Math skills of measuring and graphing are used in the development of the notebooks. The metric system is used for all measurements.

District Superintendent Mike Klentschy said the program is designed to give educators immediate feedback on the progress of their students.

"Hands-on science teaching and performance assessment go hand in hand," he said. The "hands on approach" means exactly that.

Instead of handling textbooks, students will be handling such things as live crayfish, red worms and caterpillars.

"It's all hands on," said Quinn, who is also the district's science resource teacher. "There are no textbooks in any of this," she said. Instead, students are involved almost everyday in some kind of scientific investigation.

"The units, four at each grade, offer a well-balanced curriculum," she said. The areas covered are life, earth/space and physical science.

Students - depending upon their grade level - will grow plants, care for butterflies, hatch brine shrimp from eggs, measure the movement of their shadow through the day and construct simple electric circuits.

The fact teachers and students are not tied to a text book also benefits special needs students, such as those with limited English or in special education programs.

Students can participate in the investigations, then write their notebooks in whatever language is most comfortable. With students in Special Education programs, "they don't have to read a textbook," she said.

"We are looking at this as something all kids can participate in," Quinn said.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena helped design the program.

In 1995, the El Centro Elementary School District was one of three districts in California selected to work with the Caltech Precollege Science Initiative Center for Teacher Enhancement.

That program enabled development of an inquiry-based science program in three schools: McKinley, Hedrick and Sunflower. About 80 percent of the teachers in the schools have been participating in the voluntary program.

This fall, the new science curriculum will be offered in all El Centro elementary schools.

One other unique part of the science program is the teacher training. Teachers receive six hours of training for each individual science kit they use. Trainers are other teachers who have taught the unit at least twice.

Science professionals from the community also are helping to train the teachers. The district has had assistance from local companies and agencies, including General Dynamics, the Imperial Irrigation District and Laidlaw Environmental Services. Participants have included pharmacists, engineers, veterinarians, chemists and agricultural biologists.

Said Quinn, "The El Centro School District is excited about the changes in science education and assessment taking place in our schools. We look forward to district and countywide partnerships in implementation of the NSF grant."

Some summer learning activities

How Can I Help My Child with Science?

Children are born scientists. They are curious about their world and spend most of their first years of life exploring and experimenting with their surroundings. You can encourage your child to continue to learn the way scientists learn.

1. Ask your child about what he or she has studied in science at school. Ask questions. Why? How?
   And accept all their ideas.

2. Look for articles in the newspaper, books, videos(available at the public library) or other materials about things that interest your child. Read and watch them together. Some books have simple experiments you can do at home with your child.

3. It's okay to say, "I don't know" when your child asks you a question. Ask, "How can we find out?"
   "What do YOU think might happen if..." Perhaps you could look in a book or do an experiment together to find the answer.

4. Look for science programs on TV to watch together. "Magic School Bus" and "Bill Nye, the science guy" are excellent children's science programs on PBS (Channel 8). The Discovery Channel (31) and the Disney Channel (22) also have programs on animals, ecology, the earth, and the universe. National Geographic often has special programs on animals and their habitats.

5. Let your child safely "mess about" with things in order to learn for him or herself. Encourage them to observe animals, plants, dirt, and clouds. Have them describe these things to you. The powers of observation and accurate description are essential in science.

6. Show your child that science can be fun and even adults can enjoy it!