Connections. If I had to pick a word to represent this year, it would be connections. One of my goals this year was to make connections more clear for students. I wanted to be intentional in my instruction, so that they would see connections between the SEPs, DCIs and CCCs. But that word keeps popping up....everywhere.
Connections...a schedule that allows time. I had a change in my schedule this year, which allowed me to be in one building at a time for 25 days all day long, rather than traveling between buildings each day. This has been an important change, as it opened time in my schedule to support primary teachers. I started by visiting Kindergarten classrooms to get to know the students. These young scientists then started visiting the science lab. We asked questions about clouds together, created models of clouds out of shaving cream and made it rain!
Now, when these young scientists see me they have more questions about clouds! They wave as they walk by, and are looking forward to more visits to the Science Lab.
Just as important are the connections I have made with their teachers. They invited me into their room, and found time for science. They had ideas about how to integrate science into their literacy centers, and wanted to learn about the new standards. In a few short weeks, we have developed centers for weather, and planned a field trip to Reinstein Woods in the spring for these young scientists!
Connections...from little moments in the hallways. A student was sitting on a bench waiting for his class with a teacher's aide. They were having a conversation about the water cycle as I walked by. The teacher's aide stopped me and asked Shaun to share his question. He was wondering about an experiment for the water cycle, and said he wasn't allowed to do science at home. So, I asked him if he wanted to do the experiment at school. His teacher walked by, and we set up a time for his class to visit the lab. The class was so excited and the teacher was amazed by their thinking and questions! We are setting up more times to visit and create experiments. Again, the new schedule allowed for this authentic moment of curiosity to turn into a learning opportunity!
Connections...with instructional coaches. Our district is lucky to have literacy and math coaches, who are willing to jump in and share their expertise. After a few collaboration sessions around scientific data collection and analysis, Molly DiPirro, our math coach, came to the Science Lab and co-taught a lesson on graphing. The students had collected data through an investigation on friction. We collected the data the day before, and Molly showed the student how to take their data and display it. This gave me the opportunity to learn from Molly! I now have the language and strategies to use with 3rd graders when we construct graphs in our next experiments. By leading the lesson together in the Science Lab, the students realized that math and science are connected.
My year may have originally been about curricular connections, but each day I learn that the connections popping up are just as important! I couldn't have picked a better word, so I am glad this one found me!