Girls Leading Girls in Science was a wonderful success!  The fifth grade girls arrived early from a local elementary school for Abbey Day.  The day began with an engaging Lorax lesson on sustainability implemented by education majors.  After that the fifth grade girls and their mentors

attended a college STEM class and toured the campus.  The girls and their mentors returned to the education department for a luncheon with women from the community in STEM careers.  Lively conversation was had at lunch about their careers and how they got into their current positions.

Perhaps some of the fifth grade girls will consider exploring a STEM career as a result of this engaging day.  I hope so!

Dr. J

I also want to thank her  for offering your “Girls in Science” program for the fifth year.  This connection between our female students and BAC female professionals in science has fostered self confidence among our students.  By having our girls on your campus gives then a sense of direction and helps them continue their path of following their dreams by attending college.  

I am so proud of our relationship with Belmont Abbey College and speak highly of what your program does for us.  Thank you for your continued support and care for our students.  Please take heart in knowing your are genuinely impacting many children to become life long learners and college bound students.  

Chris Germain, Principal
North Belmont Elementary School

Here is a post from a former student who took on the challenge of a Science Fair including a Science Night for parents, family, and friends to participate in.  I was asked to assist and provide some activities for the attendees to engage in science.  Some of my students assisted with activities such what are the types of contrails or how many pennies does it take to sink your aluminum boat.  We also provided “try this at home” activities to engage families.  It was a lot of fun!

Science is a subject enjoyed by students, parents, and teachers, due in large part ot the ability to investigate and discover one’s own learning through exploration.  Therefore, a “Science Night” would be a strong pull to encourage student engagement, increase parent involvement, and create an easy avenue for teachers to interact with thier students and parents in a comfortable environment.  This makes sense and should definitely be happening!  However, just like many great ideas, the hang up happens when we begin looking at the logistics of the evening.

Teachers already have more than enough on their plates, so creating an evening, organizing the many details, and carrying out the event sould like way too much extra work.  From my brief experiences, many teachers would like to participate in the science projects after school hours, but they would much rather just participate!  The planning can be a definite challenge, but if someone is willing to take on the planning, other teaches will show to help, and the benefits will be workth it.  The greatest benefit is the children seeing their adult role models, paretns and teachers, get truly excited about learning.  It may be just one night, but the effect could potentially impact the reset of the child’s educational path.

Jake Mehle

Third Grade Teacher

North Belmont Elementary School

It was exciting to see all the families, teachers, and students participating in the evening.  I believe it is made more enjoyable for all when the entire community gets involved, including professors and local college students.

Next time you are asked to get involved in a Science Night please say yes and then get your local community involved.

Many of you have asked me to post my Jelly Belly Key that demonstrates dichotomous keys in a fantastic fashion. Sometimes when you purchase jelly bellies there are new ones that are not on the key. You have a choice to modify the key yourself or do it with the children on a SMART board if possible. Enjoy this because your students will.

Dr. J

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/13/obrien.degrasse.tyson.jobs.cnn

According to a research team in Northern Illinois University, girls in high school are enjoying science less than their counter parts in science. Why? This study is just preliminary and more results will be released later. The data indicates that females are bored in science class more often than the males. Well the study does not indicate why but my guess is partly due to society telling them for years, perhaps even decades, that science and mathematics is a boys’ subject.

I believe we must dispel this myth early in science. I am trying to do this with my program called Girls Leading Girls in Science. I am working with 5^th grade girls from a Title 1 school alongside with female STEM majors from Belmont Abbey College. Not only have we begun our mentoring program we are launching a research project with the entire 5^th grade class in January, 2010. Stay tuned as we present the research project and see the impact.

What allows something to sink or float?  An object will sink if it is heavier than water, right?  Let’s explore that concept a bit more.   Explain how a heavy steel ship floats in the ocean.  Surely it is heavier than water.  Well perhaps there is something else happening.  Did you ever notice that when something floats in water, part of it is actually under water? As it sinks (even a little bit) it pushes away the water until that amount of water weighs the same as the object that is floating. If the object you are trying to float is too heavy, it cannot push away enough water to be the same as how much it weighs. If that happens, the object will sink.

But wait; there is more to this concept of sink or float. Density is another important concept associated with sink or float.  This property called density, which is the mass of an object divided by its volume D = M/V, effects sinking and floating.  Here is how it works.  Take an empty water bottle.  Will it sink or float?  Yes of course it will float because its mass is less than the water.  Now take the same water bottle and fill it with sand.  Will it sink or float?  Yes of course it will sink because its mass is more than water.  Let’s explore the concept of density a bit more.  Things that have a lower density than water will float in water. This is because the item weighs less than the water that it displaces.

Hold on there is another factor that influences sink or float that we need to explore.  I am sure you have heard of buoyancy as it relates to the concept of sink or float.  Try this experiment.  Take a piece of aluminum foil and making a water-tight boat out of it. If you carefully put the boat in a dish or pan of water, you will see that it floats.  Now take the aluminum foil boat and crumple it up into a ball and put it back on the water. It sinks! There is the same amount of aluminum foil in both cases, but in the case of the boat, you shaped it so that it displaced a lot of water compared to the amount of water that is displaced when you crumpled the aluminum foil into a ball.

Here is a great youtube book reading of Who Sank the Boat? by Pamela Allen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsYb1YSYR34

What a wonderful way to spend a summer afternoon ……… launching rockets!

I am doing my favorite summer activity, exploring science with elementary teachers.  This week we will explore many science content areas and how to best teach them.  One of the participating teachers is a great believer of SCIENCE NOTEBOOKS. She has agreed to share her ideas with notebooks.

Mrs. Jill Thompson is a master 5th grade teacher, Camp Invention Director and a Science Olympiad Coach.

After notebooking for several years she has come up with the following ideas for organizing the notebook, grading rubrics, how to work cooperatively, and some lessons that demonstrate to students how to use a science notebook.

We discussed today that science notebooks should be shared and evaluated by peers as well as the teacher.  I believe it promotes critical thinking for everyone engaged in science notebooks.

Enjoy the assistance from Jill Thompson – thanks for your help!

Launch Science Notebooks Week 1

Launch Science Notebooks Week 2

Rubric for Science Notebooks

Science Notebook Must Haves

Station Directions on How to Use Science Notebooks

How to Interact in Science Groups