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Science is sensuous


03 February 13 08:04 AM
Many of my students are unaware they are being watched in class by critters other than teachers. As a child gets up to sharpen her pencil, a salamander scurries back under a rock, a fish darts to the surface looking for food, a cockroach slides under Read More...
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The beauty of making things


26 May 12 08:23 AM
A lot of people have asked me how they can get a trolley like mine to play with. And I usually say, "Why don't you just make one? Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood A child finds joy making things. An adult finds release buying them instead . One of Read More...
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NGSS: The first "S" means "science"


25 May 12 10:50 AM
As I sink deeper into the morass of words that pretends to advance science in the name of economic security (which is like asking a flower to open in order to fulfill an order for FTD ), I find comfort in reading Walt Kelly's Pog o, a document at least Read More...
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Slaughtering science in the classroom


04 April 12 09:17 AM
It's planting time--as has been for the past few weeks. I poke a small hole in the earth, drop in a seed, push dirt over the hole, then go on to the next. It is an act of faith that each seed will erupt into a growing organism, thrusting it roots deep Read More...
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Why kids love science anyway...


01 April 12 08:29 PM
As much faith as I have in natural laws, I have much less faith in my ability to lasso them as needed in a classroom. I've had some spectacularly loud, messy failures. Kids like this. As much as the Arne's and the Eli's and the Bill's want to control Read More...
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Why we hate science, 2


01 April 12 06:54 PM
Leslie and I walked along the edge of the Atlantic this afternoon, arguing just what that meant. She believes the edge is ephemeral, abstract, and I drew a line at the highest point of the last wave. It was a pointless discussion, and done in play, but Read More...
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Approximation to adequacy: why we hate science


01 April 12 09:21 AM
The individual concepts of children, and the individual concepts of most persons who live and die in this world, are exceedingly vague, crude, and obscure. That is, they are vague, crude, and obscure in comparison with any approximation to adequacy. Francis Read More...
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Discovery Education's "Beyond the Textbook" Forum, Part 2


17 March 12 09:17 AM
While some schools have fancy Madagascar hissing cockroaches, we made do with an American cockroach, the huge one found in norther Jersey. A child volunteered that she her dad had caught one at work, and wondered if she might bring it in. I loved the Read More...
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"Is this right...?"


13 March 12 08:15 PM
Procedural rules are both useful and arbitrary--we like to have routines, and we like to know the routines already established. (I bet the 20 odd people backed up at Newark Liberty Airport while I fumbled with the check-in procedure would agree.) A child Read More...
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The Art and Science of Science and Art


11 March 12 02:25 PM
Chris is the guy on the left.... I've had an interesting past few days in Tampa the past few days, celebrating the work of our principal Chris Jennings and our school at the NASSP Convention. We're a MetLife Foundation Breakthrough School this year and Read More...
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Transformations


28 February 12 08:47 PM
Yesterday we fooled a few bacteria into taking in some jellyfish DNA, and now they fluoresce green. Tomorrow I will take a few colonies of these and give them what we all need--food, shelter, and a little security, and I'll get a few million more by Thursday. Read More...
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"No ideas but in things"


22 February 12 08:07 PM
"No ideas but in things." --William Carlos Williams Stuff comes from stuff. That's a big deal. Everything you touch came from something else. If we ever truly taught science as knowledge, instead of as a means to magical goals, we'd get this. If we ever Read More...
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The electric slide


18 February 12 09:32 AM
I occasionally borrow a hand-cranked generator from the physics folks a floor below. It's a very simple device, exquisitely crafted by someone likely dead now. It should work well for another hundred years. It's simple, and makes the concept of "generating" Read More...
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Curious thoughts


17 February 12 12:37 PM
I have had it up to my ears with folks reminding me about the natural curiosity of children, as though teachers spend their idle hours dreaming of ways to squelch it. Unless the definition of curiosity has evolved (which is quite possible in an ed world Read More...
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Quahogs, Darwin, and grace


12 February 12 09:26 AM
Today is Darwin Day , honoring a complex man with a stunningly simpleidea that replaced the need for magical thinking. Folks may hold on to their magic, I know I do, but they can no longer use rational thinking to hold on to the idea that the Hand of Read More...
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