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Program nurtures inquiring minds photo by Jim Craven First-grade teacher Kathy Calvo helps Amber Ray, 7, with reading a thermometer during scientific inquiries at Washington Elementary School in Medford. The goal of a new science curriculum is to help students learn to think like scientists. School's teaching science from bottom up By Vicki Guarino of the Mail Tribune They begin with sunlight. Sun, the energy source that powers all. From there, the Washington Elementary School fifth-graders build their grassland environments, setting in order what feeds what in the food chain. They work in small groups, on the floor with large sheets of paper, markers, yarn, scissors and glue, to diagram the interdependency of plants and animals. Eventually, they will remove two grassland features and discover how they had set matters awry. The class already has wandered through the Lower Klamath Lake area to see and feel the world they now are setting on paper. These science activities all come as a surprise to fifth-grader Jessica Wright. "I thought it was just going to be looking at books," Jessica says as she draws an arrow from the sun at the top of her diagram to the grass at the bottom, indicating photosynthesis. "I love science because you get your hands on stuff." Sun and grass, sprouting pumpkin seeds, ice cubes and thermometers, homemade stethoscopes and heart-rate charts, simple electrical circuits and rags -- all around the west Medford elementary school, science stuff has crowded out wordy science books. Teachers are putting students' hands to work to engage their minds. They've got kindergartners mulling over hypotheses and first-graders considering properties of insulation. The goal is to boost academic performance. Teachers say they are trying to meet a two-fold need: They have to enable youngsters to gain the sort of knowledge they now need to pass Oregon assessment tests, and they have to give youngsters background for the middle school and high school classes that will ready them for the CIM -- the Certificate of Initial Mastery that signifies high school academic achievement. The standards grew from a mandate of the 1991 Legislature to improve public education. A result has been curriculum overhauls around the state. Leading the classroom efforts are schools like Washington Elementary, where teachers working under state and federal grants have been creating new ways to present subjects. Washington's teachers began four years ago, knowing they and their students were ill-prepared for the new standards in science. The teachers lacked the technical background in the scientific methods and processes covered on the new state test. "We're not scientists," says teacher Wayne Leach, one of five Washington teachers who created the new curriculum. "We had to learn as much as we could." The students lacked sufficient classroom materials and -- in the case of Washington School especially -- the family resources to augment and enrich the class work. Washington has an 83 percent poverty rate, says Medford district curriculum administrator Kathy McCollum, one of the highest incidences of family poverty around. Parents struggle to provide the basics for their children, says McCollum, so travel, museum visits and similar activities are rare. Besides, McCollum adds, parents -- like teachers -- probably would find the new demands of science instruction daunting. Test questions no longer ask what things are, but how and why they exist and react as they do. Years ago, a test would ask students to look at the diagram of a simple electrical circuit, for example, and identify the parts. Now, says teacher Connie Vandenbergh, students have to decide whether the motor, or the light bulb, or both would run with switches set as illustrated. "If you haven't messed with these things, you will not be able to answer this question," says Vandenbergh. When she and other teachers first scanned the new state test, they saw lots of questions they figured their kids couldn't answer. To confirm their fears, they enrolled Washington in a pilot state program and tested everybody. Teachers had been right. "We were low," Vandenbergh says. "We were below state averages in every science content area." "We were below everybody," Leach recalls. Next step in the pilot called on teachers to do something about the scores. Vandenbergh and Leach, joined by fellow teachers Kathy Calvo, Brian Brown and Sandi English, decided to focus on what seemed to be at the heart of Oregon's science instruction initiative: scientific inquiry. Inquiry, much more demanding and disciplined than a science experiment, also seemed to be the most difficult aspect of the initiative. Experiments were activities done by teachers and observed by students that followed a simple recipe of measuring, pouring and mixing. "We called them cookbook experiments," says Vandenbergh. Inquiries, even at their simplest, get students to start thinking like scientists, the teachers say. "Students must learn to question the environment around them, learn to collect data, and learn to analyze information," teacher Ann Manes wrote for the English as a Second Language portion of the curriculum. ESL students grow pumpkins to prove plants' need for water. In inquiries, kids start with a problem and make a hypothesis -- even if they're too young to pronounce the word. They design and follow a set of procedures to prove or disprove their hypothesis, record results on a chart or graph, and finally make conclusions based on what they see on the chart. Inquires start in kindergarten, where kids predict that jumping around a lot will make their hearts sound "different." They jump, then shout out the heartbeats they hear through cardboard-tube stethoscopes. Teacher Kellie McCollum keeps score with slash marks on a chart. Then they jump longer; count out heartbeats; and for a third time jump even longer. Just by looking at all the slash marks, kids can tell their hearts beat faster and faster. In first grade, kids predict that a fuzzy piece of cloth would be the warmest because it's most like the fur of an animal outdoors all winter. They record the temperature, cover their thermometers with one of a variety of cloth scraps, set a small bag of ice on top and wait. Three minutes later, everyone checks their thermometers, and Calvo posts their reading on a chart. Sure enough, they all agree, the thermometer covered by the fur changed the least. Hypothesis proved. Washington teachers seem to have been right too, when they made their hypothesis about curriculum changes. After a one-year pilot, Washington adopted the new science program for all 500 students. Last spring, Washington students' science test scores beat state averages, posting gains that exceeded state averages for improvement. Teachers are introducing the curriculum throughout the remaining 13 Medford district elementary schools this year. A $12,500 Wells Fargo grant is paying for supplies and teacher training. Teachers are meeting this week to compare early results. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA