Young Students Wowed by Science

Science education for elementary school students is a conundrum. Most people would agree that a strong background in math and science during the K-6 years sets the stage for academic and career success. Yet many elementary schools struggle to provide an adequate learning experience in the sciences because of a lack of resources or teacher training or simply the inability to get started.

The Wonders of Our World (WOW) science education program based in Columbus, Ohio, is one effort to address this problem. Created and directed by Ohio State University (OSU) analytical chemistry professor Susan V. Olesik, WOW supplements existing science programs in elementary schools by providing training workshops for teachers on how to conduct hands-on experiments in the physical and biological sciences. The program then provides scientist volunteers to assist the teachers in carrying out the experiments with their students.

Many of the volunteers are OSU faculty and students, but the volunteers also include scientists from the local community, such as staff members of the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), as well as employees from American Electric Power, Battelle, Ashland Chemical, Roxane Laboratories, and other companies.

Education studies show that elementary school students are inquisitive and at the age that is the most amenable to learning about science, Olesik points out. By the time students reach middle school, their interest wanes and moves into other areas. WOW is designed to help change that progression.

Young students are inherent scientists, Olesik says. They just need experiments to do. We can move them to a deep interest in science at a young age and keep them going.

Olesik developed the idea for WOW after she conducted some experiments with her daughter's class and realized a need for greater emphasis on science for elementary school students. At about the same time, Olesik observed that one of her freshmen students at OSU didn't understand basic algebra, a fundamental part of balancing chemical equations.

I had a revelation, she recalls. I realized that I couldn't fix that kind of a problem at the freshman level of college. It needed to be fixed at a much earlier level.

Olesik approached the principal at her daughter's school and proposed to develop a program in which scientists would come into the school and interact with the teachers. The goals were to supplement the existing science curriculum, increase science materials available to schools, and increase the involvement of scientists in community projects. The idea took hold, and the program was launched in fall 1999.

Olesik spent much of the first year of the program reading about science standards, grade-appropriate themes and materials, and teaching methods. She also spent time talking with teachers about their needs. Olesik discovered that elementary school teachers don't always have the science background necessary to teach the science they are being asked to cover today. That process was quite an education for me, she says.

WOW tries to recruit schools that are struggling with test scores and passing rates in proficiency tests, although any school is eligible to participate. Schools that accept the program commit to a three-year sequence of teacher workshops in which the school's entire professional staff must participate. Typically, six workshops are held throughout a school year, and the school gets to choose the topic for each session. Some of the topics are chemistry, electricity, geology, insects, simple machines, sound, weather, and plants.

There's now a selection of five to 10 experiments for each of these topics-about 125 experiments in all. Chemistry experiments include chromatographically separating the coloring in grape soda, making ice cream, and determining the pH of foods and household chemicals.

One of the favorite experiments involves live crickets, Olesik says, laughing. Among other activities, the students hold cricket races in which they measure how far a cricket can jump and then compare the distance with the cricket's body size. The students then see how far they themselves can jump relative to their own body size.

At the end of three years, slowly but surely we will have covered almost every science topic that an elementary school teacher would need to teach with hands-on experiments, Olesik notes.

The teacher workshops taught by Olesik and her assistants begin with a background discussion and continue with a demonstration of each experiment. The teachers then work through the experiments, and the results and explanations are discussed as a group. About two weeks later, the scientist volunteers attend a similar training workshop on how to run the experiments. Then about two weeks after that, the volunteers visit individual classrooms to assist the teachers with the hands-on lessons, which take about an hour.

One of the key attributes of the program is collaboration, Olesik points out. Teachers are the experts on the education front, scientist volunteers are the experts on the science front, and the combination of the two is a powerful force.

WOW's focus on the teachers allows them to improve their science content knowledge and their enthusiasm for science, she says. The idea is for the teachers to become comfortable enough to move forward on their own once the program is finished at their school. This approach means that the program eventually can influence many more students than just those served in any given year. WOW also provides the teachers with a permanent pathway to scientists at OSU and local companies.

The volunteers are trained to go to the classrooms as humble helpers to assist the teachers, rather than to go in and take over the classroom, Olesik points out. Depending on the school, there are one to four volunteers per classroom. They bring all the needed materials as a science kit and leave the kit with the classroom teacher when the session is over.

Some companies have donated equipment or funds to buy equipment that becomes part of a school's permanent inventory, such as microscopes, labware, and weighing balances. CAS, American Electric Power, and Dow Chemical have made significant monetary contributions, Olesik notes. In addition, several nonprofit foundations have provided educational grants, and OSU's College of Mathematical & Physical Sciences provides the salary and benefits for the program's full-time administrative coordinator. Overall, the program doesn't cost the schools anything, except for their time.

WOW currently serves about 100 teachers and approximately 2,000 students in four elementary schools, and the program has a pool of 300 to 400 scientist volunteers. Eight schools and a total of more than 10,000 students have completed the three-year cycle and are considered alumni of the program. The Columbus area has a population of more than 1 million people, and the school system has more than 90 elementary schools.

Educators can't shoulder the problem of science education on their own. There are a lot of scientists out there, and it is in our best interests to be helping.

So how well is the program working? Proficiency test scores and passing rates have risen significantly-in many cases nearly doubling-for all the schools that have participated in the program. The inner-city schools have shown the greatest progress, Olesik notes.

That's phenomenal, because many of the inner-city kids are behind on their reading skills by as much as two years, she says. You have to be able to read to understand and answer the science questions on the proficiency tests. I'm very proud of those teachers and the students. They've accomplished a lot.

Everyone who participates in the program gets something out of it, Olesik observes. Teachers learn new science, the kids are learning new science and becoming interested in science, and the volunteers feel enriched by the program and learn how to contribute to the education community. It's a program that passes on the enthusiasm of science to everyone involved.

Olesik personally has changed the way she teaches her college courses after watching the elementary students learning from the hands-on experiences. For example, in her quantitative analysis course, she brings students out to a wetland where they take samples to study the equilibrium chemistry of a natural aquatic system. I never would have done that if I hadn't experienced the impact of interactive learning, she says.

WOW quickly became an important way to extend and support our science curriculum, notes Martha Scherpelz, a teacher at Chapman Elementary School in Dublin, a suburb of Columbus. Chapman was the first school to participate in the WOW program.

The projects and demonstrations are very tactile and easily understood, and we often used materials that were common and familiar, Scherpelz notes. The advantage there was that the students could, and often did, go home to repeat the project for someone else.

An added bonus for us is the excellent materials and equipment we still use on a weekly basis, she continues. We have high-quality microscopes that all of our primary-age students are required to master. Most of our students are able to accurately use a triple-beam balance, and they enjoy weighing everything from an interesting rock from the playground to their shoes.

Perhaps the greatest gains came in two hard-to-measure areas: awareness and enthusiasm. The volunteers coming into the classrooms loaded down with equipment were an immediate eye-opener for the students, Scherpelz says. The influence of the college student volunteers was particularly beneficial, especially for the girls.

One longtime WOW volunteer is Moris K. Niknam, an information analyst in the organic and macromolecular science department at CAS. Not only can you, as a scientist, touch these eager-to-learn students, you also are touched by their learning and curious questions, Niknam comments.

WOW can serve as an outstanding science outreach resource for many students who might otherwise do without experiments in the classroom, he adds. The experiments are fun, so the students enjoy listening to you and participate in the experiments with great joy.

I really enjoy participating in WOW, notes OSU chemistry student Joanna Engel, another program volunteer. The kids are always very excited for us to come. As soon as we walk into the room, they can't wait to get started, and when we leave, they always want to know when we'll be back. The time commitment is not a burden for college students who want to volunteer, she adds, yet it has a huge impact on the kids that we visit and teach.

Olesik has had requests for information on the program from many U.S. states and from countries around the world, she says. Some interested educators from Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan have even traveled to Columbus to learn about WOW. The program's website (wow.osu.edu) averages about 100,000 hits per month.

We want to expand the program slowly, but carefully, so the quality is maintained, Olesik notes. The program is currently set to branch out to another region of Ohio, and the satellite operation will be administered by assistant chemistry professor Paul S. Szalay at Muskingum College, in New Concord, about 75 miles east of Columbus. CAS and Battelle have made stronger commitments to the program by adopting individual schools. The ACS local section in Columbus is planning to adopt a school as well.

I deeply believe scientists need to become more involved, Olesik says. Educators can't shoulder the problem of science education on their own. There are a lot of scientists out there, and it is in our best interests to be helping.