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Michael DiEnno For close to 20 years, Michael DiEnno has approached instruction and assessment with great care. His science lab students work exclusively in a hands-on environment. During a recent unit on the "apparent movement" of the sun through the sky, first graders traced shadows from two-liter bottles with sidewalk chalk, and then observed to see how their shadows moved out of the chalk outline over time. He taught kindergartners how animals use their sense of smell by spraying six different fragrances on separate cards and placing them around the room. He then gave the students separate cards sprayed with the fragrances and had them search for their matching cards. "I have seen students at the elementary level achieve great accomplishments if given the right guidance and time," DiEnno says. "Therefore, I believe that all students can perform, regardless of age, and succeed in any task presented to them in school." |
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Marlon Francis With most of his students characterized as visual, spatial and kinesthetic learners from very low-income families, Marlon Francis strives to maximize student involvement and collaborative learning. For the past five years, he's encouraged students to use everyday materials like polystyrene, cardboard boxes, balsawood and plastic bottles to design and construct physical images of difficult concepts. During the study of motion and response time, students design automated fish and dog feeders. Environmental students grow culinary herbs, dry them using solar energy and prepare them as marketable products. Others create gravel culture gardens from used vehicle tires. "The education of our young people should not be driven by grades but by their performance in critical areas that are applicable and relevant to their daily lives," Francis says. "I de-emphasize grades but encourage performance to demonstrate understanding of concepts, using vocabulary in context, constructing concepts for visualization and applying knowledge to the rest of the world." |
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Lisa Klette Peek into Lisa Klette's classroom and you may wonder why several students are at the center of the room rolling around on the floor. Stay a few minutes and you'll see they're acting as water molecules filling the bottom of a "container." As the temperature drops, they slow down, get closer together and find a fixed position next to one another just as they've learned molecules to behave. That's because in Klette's class, science is fun — and, for the past 13 years, that's the way she has approached teaching. Her room is known as "The Zoo," home to three chinchillas, two degus, two turtles, a rat and several types of fish. Her students regularly participate in Physics Quest, a program where they help a famous scientist complete a task or solve a problem. "Most students walk into my class thinking science is just a class you have to take," Klette says. "I even ask how many plan to be scientists and few, if any, raise their hands. My goal is to show that they already are scientists. Every day they organize information about the world around them. Every day they ask questions and then do experiments to find answers. That is science." |
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Sara Poeppelman Visitors to Sara Poeppelman's biology and chemistry classrooms often find her giving a whoop or a holler, dancing a little jig or simply sharing a big smile and a pat on the shoulder when she sees that her biology and chemistry scholars "get it," no matter how big or small the lesson. "Acknowledging the achievement of my students increases their self-esteem and boosts their chances of wanting to achieve success again," says Poeppelman, who, for the past eight years, has tapped into a wide variety of learning styles throughout her curriculum. While most available teaching resources are written as verification activities for any given scientific concept, Poeppelman often changes the order and adds her own unique spin to make the material to make it more engaging to students. Her approach works. Lewis County High School eighth graders consistently score above average on the science portion of the state assessment exam and higher on the science subsection of the ACT than other areas. |
