Bringing Science and Literacy Home

The Winter Conference “Within Sight, Within Reach, Within Us” is over now and all are back in the swing of school and home.  Coaches and teachers have affirmed their goals for children and are reinforced with new ideas.  School leaders are leading their staffs in meeting the science standards, complete with clear statements of “What I’m Looking For.”  Parents are inspired to link science with their commitment to their children’s literacy development and to bring the week’s experiences to the other school families.

As the result of the conference, Patricia Wright, parent from Hart Magnet School in Stamford, Connecticut, described a new sense of her role with her own children:

This Conference was a life saver for me. It was especially on Wednesday when Neil deGrasse Tyson was speaking about Science.   My daughter Candace has a science project due this month and I feel very encouraged by his words. I will help her with her next science project instead of my older kids.  I came from a Haitian background where I was never exposed to a science lab and had the opportunity to do experiments.  It was all about memorizing science lessons and scientific methods.

I profit a lot from these conferences.  I would like to thank everyone who is sponsoring this program. I feel like they are special people caring about our children. Thank you so much for all your help!

During the conference, parents discussed ways to take the Winter Meeting experience back home. Three ideas were:

• Share experiments that can be done at home at PTA meetings;
• Hold a Family Science Night in conjunction with a school Science Fair; and
• Write a “Did you Know Science Is….?” column in the Cornerstone Connections parent newsletter.

What all ideas have in common is that they are ways parents and school staffs can share the idea that science is fun with families.  One obstacle to parent involvement with science was pointed out by several parents.   Many parents (and some teachers too) think science is hard because they didn’t do well with it in school.   The big idea taken home by the parents who attended the conference was “to talk to other parents about the fact that science is fun – and to point out that families already do a lot of science everyday in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the backyard, everywhere.”

What are some experiences that can be taken back home to each of the Cornerstone school communities?

Community Connections can inspire partnerships between home and school. 
The American Museum of Natural History, the Hayden Planetarium and Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson were a special way to kick off the Cornerstone Conference and make the link between science and literacy.   Everyone in the audience was encouraged to make a personal connection to Dr. Tyson’s inspiring remarks.  Parent Michelle Wright from Springdale Elementary School in Stamford brought her children to hear him speak.  Her son was so motivated by Dr. Tyson’s refuting common scientific fallacies (that the sun is yellow, that days get longer in the summer, that the North Star is the brightest star in the sky) that he went home to his computer and researched what IS the brightest star in night sky.  How many of us took time to notice the night sky this week or to pay attention to the news reports that Saturn was visible last week, close by the full moon?

Scientists are everywhere, like people who use science every day in their work as farmers or as cooks or in manufacturing.  There are museums, corporations and public institutions in every community.  Schools can invite in dedicated community members to link science and literacy.  Hearing their stories can make all of us, adults who work in the schools, parents, children and relatives want to look more closely at our world.

Playing around with exploring the world is what scientists do, and it can be encouraged at home.  
Parents took a close look at the kinds of “Tools of Exploration” used by scientists, as described by the staff of the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco (see excerpt and link below) and noticed how these tools mirror the comprehension strategies Cornerstone schools use in literacy instruction.   Participants at the Conference had opportunities to use these tools.   We noticed the world around us and recorded what we saw.  We looked at our thumbs through a jeweler’s loop and wrote thumbprint poems.   Parents followed a reading of A Very Hungry Caterpillar with an investigation of fruits (all kinds of things with seeds -- apple, mango, orange, kiwi, green pepper, avocado). We cut them up, examined them, tasted them, smelled them, talked about what we saw, and then recorded through charting, drawing or writing in our science journals. 

Asking the question “What would happen if…?” and experimenting to find out.   Antoine’s flourish, as demonstrated in pulling a loop out from under a quarter and having it land neatly inside the small neck of a bottle, is an experience we will long remember!  But most important to my mind is that Gwen Edmonds, parent from Rigdon Road School in Columbus, Georgia, asked questions like “what would happen if we stacked two quarters?”   This started an animated discussion of wondering what would happen if you used stones of various sizes and shapes or a bottle with a different size neck opening.  These are all explorations that can be done at home.   Other experiments that caught the imagination of parents in various sessions were:

• Getting the potato battery to actually light a bulb;
• Identifying sounds while blindfolded and noticing that if you fold over the flap of your ear it is much harder to hear the direction the sound is coming from;
• Figuring out the moon’s phases using our heads as the earth, a ball as the moon and a lamp as the sun; or
• Changing a recipe one thing at a time to see what happens, especially when you have to deal with children’s allergic reactions to key ingredients like wheat.

Sharing what happened. 
A very important tool used by scientists is talking to colleagues about what was tried, sharing the experience widely, making guesses as to why it happened, coming up with new experiments to test out these guesses.  As we all go back to our classrooms or our homes, let’s agree to try things and share what happens.  Our children will be the ones who benefit every time we explore the world we live in and show what we care about.

Tools for Exploration (Chapter Two of Exploratopia)