El Verano teams with the Exploratorium to make science fun

Breaking news: students at El Verano are talking about science in the halls and have even been heard exclaiming, “I love science!” The school’s new collaborative science program with the San Francisco Exploratorium has created a new buzz around science at the school. Former Sonoma Valley Unified School District Superintendent Barbara Young brought the pilot project to the school in September 2008. It is privately funded by a generous Sonoma donor with an interest in science.
According to El Verano principal, Maite Iturri, the program has been phenomenal in helping with English language development because the students have more enthusiasm for mastering English when the topic is something fun. “Last week the students shot off bottle rockets,” said Iturri. “This was the culmination of research for their scientific inquiry. It was a really fun learning experience.”
Described as a marriage of inquiry-based science and English language development, this pilot is the first of its kind.
“A generous Sonoma benefactor has enabled us to develop activities for the teachers and facilitate monthly workshops to discuss how things are actually working in the classroom,” said Lynn Rankin, who heads up the program for the Exploratorium. “It’s an ideal collaboration involving all the teachers at El Verano and the Exploratorium’s Institute of Inquiry.”
The program works like this: to help English language development, students are grouped first by grade level and then broken into groups based on language development needs. The various teachers for each grade level are assigned permanently to their ELD groups. Once in their groups, the students work through the inquiries, one at a time until it is time to do the actual experiment. At present, there are four inquiries that have been developed for the year. The program runs every school day except Wednesday.
Completing an inquiry takes anywhere from one to three weeks. First the students make predictions, write in their journals and hypothesize about what might happen. For instance, with the bottle rockets, students wondered what would happen when they used different liquids like water and Coke, and different solids like baking soda and Mentos candy. Then, as a group, they make decisions and create a plan to execute their experiment. Then, they let it fly – in this case, literally.
Once the experiment is complete, each group puts together an oral presentation and delivers to the other groups and sometimes to other classrooms. Besides the bottle rocket experiment, students have participated in investigations including magnets, light, sound, potato growing, snails, and stream tables that illustrate the flow of water.
“The best part is seeing the expression on the students’ faces,” said Iturri. “For most of them this is a completely new experience, which is exciting. And the fact that they’re developing their English language skills in the process is quite a bonus.”
Teacher training for the program began last February with representatives from the Exploratorium. The Exploratorium also helped to convert textbook lessons into interactive inquiries, which took the better part of last year. At this point, creating additional inquiries is high on the list of priorities. Iturri hopes the program will be rolled out at other schools throughout the district.