One night, Julie gets ready to complete her science homework. She lays out a pencil and a piece of paper and takes out a balloon, measuring tape, a tall glass, baking soda, and vinegar. She considers her focus question to be "What is the limiting reagent in a baking soda and vinegar reaction?" She rolls up her sleeves and gets to work.
To answer this question, Julie needs to collect some data. First, she mixes equal parts vinegar and baking soda. She measures the resulting product—carbon dioxide gas—by putting a balloon over the top of the glass and measuring its circumference. She repeats her procedure, but this time, she adds a two-to-one ratio of vinegar to baking soda. She is surprised to find that the balloon's circumference does not change. Julie decides to try again, but this time, she switches the ratio to one part vinegar and two parts baking soda. Bingo! The balloon is nearly twice as big. Satisfied with these results, Julie concludes that baking soda is the limiting ingredient in the reaction and, thus, completes her 5th grade science homework assignment.
Weekends with Moo-Moo
Lisa's experiment is an example of how we can reimagine science class. What if students could perform more independent, original research? What if they learned science through experiments and examining and sharing results? It's the epitome of science education: The students are the scientists.
There are simple and inexpensive ways to implement this idea in the classroom. In my 5th grade science classroom, we called it "Weekend Science," and, as with many good ideas, my students inspired the project. They bounced into our first class, and a few of them immediately noticed a stuffed animal on a shelf. It was a decorative relic, but they eagerly asked if they could take the moose home. With a little teacherly augmentation by me, the idea of Weekend Science with "Moo-Moo the Moose" was born.
The structure was simple. Every weekend, a student took Moo-Moo home and performed an experiment. Students generated ideas for experiments based on classroom conversations or by browsing texts listing potential experiments. After the student hosting Moo-Moo performed their experiment, he or she posted a short explanation, along with a picture or a video, on our class blog. When Moo-Moo and the student returned on Monday, the student shared the experiment with the class. I encouraged their peers to ask questions and post them in the comments of the experiment's accompanying blog post.*
*Students' names were removed or covered for privacy.
Weekends with Moo-Moo encouraged students' interest in and built the foundation for actively doing science. Although many of the initial experiments were closer to demonstrations, the class Q&A led to natural discussions about controls and independent and dependent variables, even though we didn't use those terms. Without explicitly teaching the scientific method or what makes a controlled experiment, the students learned about those things through discovery and discussions.
The next step in transforming our class to help students think and act like scientists involved controlled science experiments. To prepare, we took four days of class time to plan the students' procedures. Each student brainstormed new questions or a spin-off question from his or her last experiment. They turned this brainstorming into a formal scientific question: "What are the differences between a dependent variable and an independent variable?" To prevent language from being a barrier, I didn't insist that students use sophisticated scientific vocabulary to discuss their experiments. Instead, we talked about one thing to change in the experiment, one way to measure the change, and five things that we would keep the same from the previous experiment. Then the students wrote a hypothesis, stating what they thought would happen and making a clear and well-supported case for why they predicted these outcomes. To build graphing skills, students collected the data from their experiment results in tables and created bar graphs to present their findings.
With the planning process complete, Moo-Moo again traveled to a different home each weekend. Each student performed his or her controlled experiment, recorded the data, and filled in his or her bar graph. In addition, everyone wrote a structured conclusion. Because they had written out much of their previous work on these experiments (scientific questions, hypotheses, etc.), they could easily adapt that information for their conclusions. They simply added their new results and provided explanations for their data. Each scientist presented his or her conclusions to the class and fielded questions. As a culmination of the research, each student's work was published in a class scientific journal that will be a class reference in future years.
Young students can do real science if you give them the chance to think and act like scientists. The classroom processes to support this shift do not have to be expensive or time consuming. The Weekend Science Project worked because it encouraged students to feel excited about science and take charge of their learning. They designed and independently performed experiments. They shared their findings collectively with peers. As a result, each student developed critical-thinking skills to weigh evidence, determine logical conclusions, and relay that knowledge to others. Rethinking science education can be simple, inexpensive, and fun—and it can have a big effect on how students see the world and their roles as researchers in it.