Using Camps to Teach Science and Mathematics
Our ancestors have always been fascinated by, and solved problems in the context of, the natural world that impacts our daily lives.
Many students enter school enthralled by science, but that passionate flame is quickly doused when formal science education is reduced to “read about science” rather than treating science as a verb.
The research of Dr. Carol O’Donnell at George Washington University concluded that conceptual development in science is attained best when science content is delivered via hands-on and inquiry-based learning experiences. A significant portion of that learning success is attributable to the fact that seven of the nine “multiple intelligences” formulated by Howard Gardner of Harvard University are typically utilized during hands-on learning. (See Chart 3: Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.)
Summer science camps take advantage of our human evolutionary interest in the physical and biological world around us.
Project-based active learning, where students participate in science inquiry, quantifying what occurs during science investigations, drawing pictures of the relationships, writing about the experiences and participating in follow-up reading (reading aloud, reading alone, choral reading) allows students to merge goals of reading, writing, listening, speaking, science, and mathematics. Educators have long separated these subjects and skills in the curriculum as if they were completely unrelated. Instead, these subjects and skills should all be taught together in meaningful and connected contexts. A child’s storytelling abilities were predictive of their mathematical abilities two years later, according to an article in the journal First Language. Children with high scores on mathematics tests also had correspondingly high scores on their storytelling abilities two years earlier.
Our human brain is massively interconnected to permit all of our competencies through:
- The association pathways, which link together areas of the cerebral cortex within the same hemisphere
- The projection pathways, which project outwards from one area of the brain to more distant areas
- The commissural pathways, which connect functional areas in one hemisphere of the brain with the identical “homotopic” (same purposed) areas in the opposite hemisphere
Ideally, learning should be all about maximizing these brain connections that produce what we call knowledge. In the book “Consilience,” Edward O. Wilson, the father of sociobiology, observed that everything in our universe is somehow connected. By softening the borders between subjects, skills, and disciplines, and instead looking for ways in which they are tied together, students will benefit by navigating the academic world easier. Academic disciplines should not be thought of as areas of specialization but rather as topics for children that are in search of attention-grabbing, “ah-ha!” connections.
Tacoma Public Schools started offering a two-and-one-half week Summer Science Camp in 2008, which capitalizes on these academic synergies. Unlike other summer school programs that start at the beginning of summer, the Tacoma project begins the month prior to the fall opening of school. Tara Edmonds, the school district’s elementary science facilitator, has reported significant growth in mathematics and science achievement scores for students who participate in Summer Science Camp.
Because the human brain craves stimulation, after brief periods of sensory deprivation we hallucinate in order to produce our own stimuli for the brain to process. For generations, parents have been led to believe that summer vacation is necessary for relaxation and recuperation from cognitive development (although by the second week of vacation, many children frequently complain that they’re bored). What is so physically or emotionally punishing about the school year that a three-month recovery period suddenly becomes mandatory? There is no research to date that confirms this notion.
The summer months frequently constitute the best time for giving children the highest quality and quantity of challenge, support, and ongoing feedback.
Students compete with perhaps 30 others for the teacher’s attention in the classroom. Support and feedback are scarce commodities in a typical classroom, but young learners in particular need a steady diet of them for academic growth, concept development and skills mastery (see Chart 4: Challenge and Support). In addition to more challenge, support, and feedback during the summer, the home and school should become places where the “S.A.I.L. philosophy” should be followed in an uncompromising fashion (see Chart 5: S.A.I.L.).
Let Them Grow
There is an old adage from Asia that says, “A man, who plants flowers, grows.” Planting a garden during the summer gives children one of the most intriguing experiences — witnessing the wonders of nature firsthand. In addition to having a unique opportunity to eat nutritional and healthful foods, the greatest returns on the time spent digging, planting the seeds and watering are:
Children unknowingly develop better “number sense” when they:
- Plant seeds in rows
- Count seedlings when they sprout
- Gather and count the vegetables
Children learn to care for another living organism, which is one of the most important skills they will learn in their entire lives.
Forward-thinking strategies like these eliminate the emotional numbness students feel from being academically blindsided when they are underprepared at the onset of a new school year. These conditions frequently promote child and adolescent depression, resulting from overwhelming helplessness. Psychologists correlate this state of mind with the overproduction of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, making learning all the more difficult.
Hopefully, these strategies and other ideas presented will generate an epiphany during your child’s summer, and for their entire life, as well. Don’t forget, the chronologically advanced brain (as in, adults) can also use this prescription for a mentally healthy summer.
This is an update of an article originally published in Brain World Magazine’s Summer 2010 issue.
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