Cristina Raposo* - Elsa Florêncio** – Eduarda

SCIENCE IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER:
Outside and Inside the classroom
Cristina Raposo* - Elsa Florêncio** – Eduarda Roussado*
*Agrupamento de Escolas Alto dos Moinhos - Terrugem, Portugal – [email protected]; [email protected]
**Agrupamento de Escolas D. Carlos I – Lourel, Portugal – [email protected]
INTRODUCTION / OBJECTIVES:
Learning outside the classroom has been motivating both students and teachers through time.
Our students are 12 to 15 years old, our classes have 28 to 30 students.
Our job is to complement our subjects with extracurricular activities which will:
• draw pupils towards science;
• help them to understand scientific processes;
• improve their autonomy as well as their teamwork and problem solving.
This work shows two different approaches/activities that have been applied in our schools.
CONCLUSIONS:
• Integrating the students, through outdoor/outside of the classroom activities, in the area where they live,
has shown they will broaden their horizons and improve their consciousness about the surrounding
environment, learning ways of taking the most out if it but also how to cherish and protect it.
• Involving students in practical activities showed their autonomy will increase in line with responsibility,
observation and problem solving skills.
• The results in the charts below confirm these activities to be effective towards motivation and to the
promotion of learning.
SCIENCE IN ACTION CLUB
Where Primary School meets Science
GEO – PAPER - a walk in Sintra
What we do:
• Teachers research, select and adapt 1 or 2 practical activities, related to the scientific subject they teach, per week.
• They meet with students 90 minutes/week to read the protocol, do the activity, talk about the results obtained to understand and master the activity.
• Students draw conclusions and relate them to the science classes (Physics/Chemistry/Biology/Geology).
• During the 2nd term the students choose activities to be shown during the Spring Week to their younger colleagues who come to visit the secondary school.
• And then we enjoy the result… the 3rd and 4th grade students, always looking forward to this week! They observe and take part in practical activities helped out by the older students who
have to be prepared to answer questions and adapt their speech to make the younger ones understand what they just experienced.
• Teachers assess in advance the area to be visited – in our case the village of Sintra – mark points of interest as stops on a map and make a list of clues.
• Pupils are asked to bring a notebook, pencil and rubber and are given a map and a set of clues.
• Pupils will have to follow the route marked on the map and interpret the clues to be able to find the
fossils/structures/rocks on the buildings and pavements.
1
A
A - Map of Sintra with stops marked
C
B
B - Rudist fossils on Neo-Manuelino Fountain
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3
4
5
C - Trilobite fossil on County Library Building
• This activity will allow pupils to discover and identify different types of fossils, rocks and geological structures in an urban
environment while associating them to their geological age and recognizing the existence of paleoclimates. They will enhance their
observation, data interpretation and deduction skills.
• The walk will finish in the Natural History Museum of Sintra where detail can be added to individual notes taken during the guided
tour.
D
D – Black and white limestone cobblestones
7
E
F
G
H
6
I
E - Natural History Museum of Sintra (Photo courtesy of Sintra Town Hall); F, G, H & I - Pupils in guided tour at the Natural History Museum
• Back in the classroom pupils will have to identify with more detail and talk about the fossils/rocks they came across during the walk.
• They can also make a tour in Google Earth where they can pinpoint and add pictures to the stops.
7a
8
9
10
11
12
1 – Getting ready to…make “elephant’s toothpaste”; 2 – The bell will ring if I touch the wire!; 3, 4, 5 & 11 – Can I measure it without making a mess? Just follow Catarina’s instructions carefully! ; 6 & 10 – I prepared “balloon kebabs”! Awesome!;
7 & 7a – Will the balloons burst? Not even with 3 of us on top of the table!; 8 – This insects look like aliens!; 9 – Will the light go on? Yes, if graphite is a conductor of electricity!; 12 – We breath through the same tube where our voice comes out!
RESULTS:
• As it can be seen on the graphics, over the past 5 years, success percentages in Science subjects have been improving.
• This can be explained through the different strategies implemented in our cluster of schools including the ones which are the object of this work.
• Students learn a wide range of scientific terms and concepts by doing experiments/activities with electrical circuits, chemical reactions and
tension/pressure apparatus, observing anatomic parts similar to the human body and amplifying insects and other samples under the microscope
and magnifying glasses.