Students embrace the ‘new science’

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Bloomfield elementary school children, from kindergarten to fifth grade, are learning science in a new way this year and the keyword to this process is “investigation.” Students are no longer confined to books but more often will seek scientific knowledge through observation and inquiry.

“The new science program provides students with an opportunity to conduct hands-on investigations,” said Lou Cappello, the school district supervisor of science. “They are tasked with analyzing data to draw conclusions and support their claims just like a scientist. The lessons are engaging and are aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards.”

And engaging they are. Last week Demarest Elementary School fifth-graders analysed the contents of owl vomit to determine the bird of prey’s place in the ecosystem.

What the students in Jessica Barton’s class found in the stomach contents were the tiny bones of moles and shrews — the owl’s supper. “Name one thing you ate that does not come from the sun,” Barton said to the class. She asked the students to think of the food chain from the sun to the owl. With this line of inquiry, the students asked themselves what did the mole and shrew dine on before the owl devoured them. Barton said the new learning method brings science alive and involves more critical thinking by the students. She was justly proud of her class.
“They really rose to the occasion,” she said. “They were very mature and inspired for career readiness.”

The children learned that in the ecosystem an owl is a consumer. Future lessons will focus on yeast, mushrooms and bacterial agents being decomposers that introduce elements into the system.

In a second-grade class at Demarest, Ashley Buhowski’s students were experimenting with marigold seeds planted in small flower pots on the window sill. Some seeds were being grown with water and sunlight; some without water; and some under a paper bag. The students had to figure what seeds would germinate and why. Principal Mary Todaro said the children are learning to hypothesize.
“What is a hypothesis?” she asked the class.

“A guess you first think about,” a student said.
At Watsessing Elementary, third-grade teacher Rachel Mazzetta had the names of four types of environments written on the board: a hot desert, a coral reef, a rain forest, and a forest. On a smartboard, the children were given clues to the identity of an organism by how it adapted to the environment it inhabited. The children had to determine the organism and environment by the clues. Then it was the students’ turn to come up with an organism and clues to where it lived. Mazzetta whispered to groups of children the environment where their organism would live.
She said the new program has changed how science is learned.

“Questioning has changed,” she said. “They are asking questions and not being told information. They have to investigate for themselves.” In the classroom lesson, by not naming the animal but the environment it inhabited, she said students needed to use a higher level of thinking.
“It was analytical and interpretative of patterns and similarities,” she said. “It requires a higher level of critical skills.”

Franklin Elementary fourth-grade teacher Shane Haimbach said a more hands-on approach requires the students to think more scientifically. In instructional science books previous to this year, he said information was based on vocabulary and critical thinking questions. But with the new textbook, the student has to think more like a scientist and ask, What problems would I confront?

“We just finished how plants protect themselves from predators,” he said. “Students were asked to create a plant in an environment with predators.”

Vocabulary is still being taught, he said, but the science has a higher level of content that will challenge students more.
“What do students need to meet the next generation science standards and at the same time have the students understand the content being presented to them,” he said is the work at hand for the science teacher.