|
Tina Grotzer; Arlington, MA
 “You
can't understand the nature of density without understanding matter. You
can't understand air pressure, and all of the weather-related phenomena
around air pressure, without understanding matter. There's just so much
that builds upon it, I would call it one of the most fundamental and generative
concepts that we can teach students.”
School at a Glance:
Thompson Elementary School
Arlington, MA
Grades: K-5
Enrollment: 323
Students per Teacher: 20
Ethnicity:
76% White
12% Asian
7% African American
5% Hispanic
Percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch: 23% versus
a state average of 29%
Nestled in the heart of East Arlington, Massachusetts, the
Thompson School is one of seven elementary schools in the district that
science specialist Nadine Solomon visits on a regular basis. In addition
to working with the students and modeling lessons for teachers, she occasionally
invites science education researchers like Tina Grotzer into classrooms.
Tina
has had a long-term relationship with the Arlington Public Schools. She
was a teacher in the system for many years, the coordinator of an elementary
academic enrichment program, a teacher professional developer, and is
now a researcher. As a researcher, Tina developed the Understandings of
Consequences
Project at Project Zero, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
The Understandings of Consequences Project addresses the difficulties that
students have in understanding cause and effect and how that influences
their learning of scientific concepts. The curriculum that grew out of
the project focuses particularly on the “non-obvious” causes
of macroscopic phenomena, like rising and sinking, by making concepts like
density more obvious.
|
prev:
children's ideas
