EL TORO : Students Set Course for Science

Annie McGuirk and her Serrano Intermediate School classmates have embarked on a 20-day North Atlantic sailing trip to examine whales.

They are using radar and sonar to battle terrific storms, navigate high seas and deal with oil spills. Last month, they completed a journey to outer space, where they rescued astronauts stranded on a distant planet.

They did all of this without leaving the confines of their science classrooms.

This year, Serrano has adopted a new science program that uses fictional adventures as a way to teach seventh- and eighth-graders. The program includes computer simulations, videos, navigational maps and old-fashioned scientific experiments.

The state Department of Education wants schools to find ways to make science more appealing, and has given Serrano $40,000 to try this approach.

“We’ve tried to look at how science was being taught and find out why kids hate it so much,” said Principal Barbara Smith, herself a former aerospace researcher who worked in the 1960s in the space program. “What we found is that kids were being asked to learn the subject but were not being allowed to think about the subject.

“Also, we need to bring the sciences together, because in the real world nothing is purely physics or biology or chemistry. It’s a combination,” she said.

Whale videos were shown earlier in the project and the students were taught the types of whales that are in danger of extinction.

So around the science classrooms on Wednesday, the voyages were well underway. In one classroom, the students were learning how to navigate, using nautical maps. In another, the students, their ships caught in a storm, were taking time out to listen to the teacher as he explained how cold fronts are created over the North Pole.

A video of a storm system flashed overhead. They then pulled out their whaler’s pan pipes, which they had fashioned from plastic straws.

“Something as simple as the pan pipes we use to teach the students about sound waves,” said teacher Jan Nichols, in whose class the navigation was being taught. “We have even brought in recordings of ‘60s protest songs about whales, to give them a little history and, again, to teach sound.”

In a third classroom, Annie and her shipmates were trapped by an oil spill. Using a water-filled glass pie pan, the students poured in vegetable oil, creating their own miniature slicks.

It was their job to figure out if it is best to contain the slick and then suck it out of the water or to absorb the slick using various materials.

“This is better than just reading about it in a book,” Annie said. “It’s more fun.”

Shipmate Melanie Baker agreed, although she thought the space expedition was better.

“I like getting to use our imagination,” she said. “With the space probe, we got to learn about robotics and make robots.”

At another table, shipmates Ryan Gustafson and Sean Butterly were busy trying to contain their spill using a piece of yellow yarn. They then used a syringe to suck up the oil.

“I’ve learned how difficult it is to clean spills up,” Ryan said.

Teacher Jenny Miller said she could not have foreseen teaching this way when her career started 19 years ago.

“We used to do what I call ‘cookbook labs,’ where at the end of each unit the teacher would do an experiment and everybody already knew how it would turn out,” she said. “But this style keeps the children more interested, because they are the ones who are finding out what’s happening. And they learn that if something doesn’t work, that’s OK, just try something else.

“And isn’t that the way we learn as adults?”