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Creating a fluid intro to inquiry

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/75562_science21.shtml

Creating a fluid intro to inquiry

Friday, June 21, 2002

By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Scientific notebooks. Theories of gravity, fluid dynamics and buoyancy.

Oh, and don't forget the cookies and milk.

Science lessons became a regular part of preschool life for more than 140 Head Start students in Seattle Public Schools this year, as the district became one of 20 sites across the country participating in a pilot program to bring science education to even the country's youngest children.

It sounds like hard work, but the science curriculum is designed to be almost indistinguishable from the regular playtime activities that draw the attention of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds.

Part of the purpose, in fact, is to attract students to science at an early age, stirring their curiosity about scientific phenomena and encouraging them to notice some of the laws that govern the natural world.

"They don't know it's science. They think it's fun," said Floretta King, a preschool teacher at Zion Preparatory Academy, a private school that joined Seattle Public Schools in field testing the program.

But the work is also part of a serious national goal -- to transform science education from the dry-as-dust textbooks and lectures that cause many older students to dismiss the topic as boring, too technical or irrelevant.

Preschoolers at Broadview-Thomson Elementary in North Seattle, for instance, spent one recent morning playing with sponges, aluminum foil, coins and other substances, seeing how water droplets beaded up on some surfaces and soaked into others.

While high school chemistry students might have taken away a lesson on molecular structures, and middle-schoolers might have articulated theories of cohesion and adhesion, it was enough for the preschoolers to simply understand that water is capable of both sticking to itself and sticking to other substances to varying degrees.

Formal preschool science curricula are still a rarity in the United States, but the idea is a natural fit for the Seattle district, which has taught a more involved "inquiry-based" science program to elementary students for the past six years.

"It's so important that they get started early, and there is so much pressure around the nation for high-quality science and math education," said Elaine Woo, K-5 project director for the school district.

The K-5 program, developed through a National Science Foundation grant that is now expiring, takes students through a steady, logical progression of topics throughout their elementary school years. It relies heavily on student observations and experiments -- such as building a magnetic compass or testing the nutritional content of various foods.

The continuity over the years is part of the key, Woo said, and it is hoped the preschool program will add to that. Even preschoolers too young to write in their science notebooks, for instance, can still participate in that part of the exercise: "They can sketch," Woo said.

In past years, science education for young children meant that "we had a textbook, and mostly it sat on the shelf," she said. "When you try to teach it that way, it's not effective, so most teachers don't."

The district has been able to put a strong structure in place to teach science, said Mark St. John, president of Inverness Research, a California-based company that evaluated Seattle and three other sites for the National Science Foundation.

"It's not like every classroom right now is getting perfect science instruction, but if you compare it (with) five years ago, many kids in Seattle are getting a rich, steady diet of science, and that's pretty rare these days in urban districts," he said.

Seattle's structure now includes a district-wide materials center; teacher training; efforts to integrate science with reading and math; and resources such as having teachers specially assigned to the program, St. John said. The question for the future, he said, is whether Seattle and the other grant-funded districts will have "the ability or will or resources" to maintain the structure the grant helped build.

Interest in extending the program to preschool began last year when Head Start teachers at T.T. Minor Elementary wanted to join in on the science lessons, Woo said.

Through the K-5 program, the district already had contacts with the Massachusetts-based Education Development Center Inc., which was developing a preschool curriculum, also with the help of a science foundation grant. Six Seattle elementaries -- Broadview-Thomson, Concord, Graham Hill, Hawthorne, High Point, and T.T. Minor -- are in the program this year, with plans to expand to all the Seattle district's Head Start classes by 2004.

It may sound like a young age to start the program, but "research in early childhood (shows) we've really underestimated children's capacity at that age level, and there is a growing focus on content in the curriculum," said Ingrid Chalufour, co-director of the project for the Education Development Center.

And instructors are trained not to overload the children, engaging in "sort of a delicate dance" to transfer the information, she said.

"The teachers never lecture to the children, the teachers are never telling them the science. She's really drawing it out of their experiences."

At Broadview-Thomson, the children looked on eagerly as Head Start teacher Yunkin Wong and lead teacher Janine Tillotson worked on a segment of the water unit, encouraging them to drip and dribble the water on different substances.

Before the youngsters' attention spans had time to flag, the water toys were put away and the classroom shifted to a recess-like hour of free play. But pieces of the science unit were still set up around the room, indistinguishable from other books and games.

Ignoring the blocks, ignoring the sandbox, Aisha Khan marched without hesitation to the room's "water table," a tub festooned with a twisty maze of funnels and tubes, and began to explore.

"This is so fun," the 5-year-old burbled, dipping cups in the tub and pouring streams of water into the tubes. Classmate Eliezer Gonzales, 4, was soon drawn to her side, laughing as he squirted himself in the face by changing the angles of the funnel mouths.

"We're making magic," Aisha announced.

Really?

"We're making soup," she said, mixing some more water into the cups.

Really?

"We're playing," she finally concluded.

The teachers remained at the students' sides, asking them what was happening and why they thought it was happening -- how the water took more time to flow through a small funnel but ran rapidly through a large one, or how it swiftly ran downhill but had to be forced up the bend in the tube to go uphill.

Asking the youngsters questions, and guiding their attention, is what makes all the difference in the program, said Tillotson.

"What moves it from playing to science is thinking about it."

P-I reporter Rebekah Denn can be reached at 206-448-8190 or rebekahdenn@seattlepi.com