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Intro
During the 1996-97 school year, I spent an hour every week in Linda
Waidler's 3rd-4th grade class at
Wood-Gormley Elementary (randomly chosen because my daughter was in it),
answering any science question the children might have. For the 97-98 year,
I did the same in Shirley Esquibel's 3rd-grade class (by coincidence, my
son was in that class). the next year, I did the science hour in Katie
Irving's 6th-grade class, and so on. Even though my kids have moved up and on, I still
go to WG. I found that in middle and high school, you can do this a
few times a year, but you cannot steal an hour a week from a science teacher.
Also, in a primary school class you reach all kids, not just
the ones in science class.
Here I have a growing number of pages with these questions, and elaborate
on some demonstrations I came up with to explain some of the concepts. In
addition, I usually find a bunch of web links on the subject, so that
children (parents, teachers) can do a bit more reading and learning.
I keep these pages for different audiences:
- For the children, so can read over some subjects again, and follow
the links I found to get more background info, and pictures.
- For the parents, so they can see what goes on in class during the
science hour.
- For fellow science teachers, that may run across them and might find
them useful
- Having done this for a few years now, these pages are a handy
archive for myself. I can quickly look up what I need for a demo.
I'd like to hear from all.
Don't be shy.
What is special is that I am a scientist, not a teacher, and I do
not have a lot of equipment (and neither does the school). The
demonstrations therefore use simple materials I find in my kitchen,
shop and yard. This is mostly no-tech science, but you'd be
surprised what you can do with cardboard, duct tape and paper
clips.
I typically update these pages every week during the schoolyear, as
questions come in, and rework older paragraphs. These pages are in
constant flux, as is everything on the web, of course
There is also a keyword index further down.
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