UW-Madison: Helps schools with science education

Contact: Michelle Harris, maharris@wisc.edu, (608) 262-7363

Madison – On a cold January morning, a few students cheer as three recent alumni of the Biology Core Curriculum honors program at UW-Madison enter a 4th grade classroom in Mazomanie, Wisconsin. These “Biocore Outreach Ambassadors” bear gifts: plastic containers, soil, fertilizer and seed from the university’s “Wisconsin Fast Plants” program.

These minimal props, combined with a basic light box – two milk crates lined with aluminum foil – are the raw materials for plant-growth experiments that Bree Wilhelmson’s students will pursue for almost two months.

The experiments were not hatched in a textbook or a science-standards cheat sheet. Instead, they were invented by groups of these 4th graders in their previous session with the UW-Madison alumni. Will the plants grow faster in the light box or outside it? What difference will fertilizer make? How will seed spacing affect plant height?

The process of “What do you want to know? So how can you answer your question?” is a key element of inquiry-based learning, and it’s the fundamental precept of Biocore, the undergraduate program that sent these alums to Mazomanie. Each year, Biocore also sends as many as 50 other science outreach ambassadors to Wisconsin schools.

In inquiry-based learning, authentic investigations take center stage and textbooks become resources, explains Biocore instructor and outreach advisor Michelle Harris.

One of the beauties of inquiry-based learning is that even an experiment gone awry can be the basis for learning, says Wilhelmson. “We have had experiments that did not ‘work’ because students changed too many variables, but even that becomes a teachable moment: ‘If you were going to do it again, how would you avoid repeating the mistake?’ The process is most important – being able to ask a question and then collect the data.”

The classroom-friendly Fast Plants, which mature in a speedy 40 days, were created more than 30 years ago by UW-Madison plant pathologist Paul Williams. The Fast Plants program has also perfected a cost-cutting strategy: raising the seeds itself, finding cheap containers and soil mixes, all aimed at producing the kind of excitement evident in Wilhelmson’s class.

After the students fill 16 wells with soil and a seed or two, they place the container on an inverted deli cup, which provides a constant supply of water, then place the cups in the light box.

And then it’s discussion time. Why, asks Harris, did one group of students hypothesize that the plants would grow better outside the light box, where the LEDs won’t stop shining? Because, explains one group member, the plants need to rest, much like people. “So you’re saying that plants are like people in this way?” says Harris.

Mazomanie 4th grade teacher Kathy Evert sees the plants as an ideal basis for inquiry-based science.

“Inquiry is about process, about thinking like a scientist,” says Evert, who began using the inquiry approach in 2008. “These experiments force you to ask questions: ‘I want to know something about the world. How do I go about engaging with that myself?’

READ THE FULL STORY: http://news.wisc.edu/uw-helps-rural-schools-update-approach-to-science-education/