Teaching Science From Home

 In the Primary Years Programme of International Baccalaureate Schools (and candidate schools) social studies and science units generally alternate throughout the school year in order to allow for enough time each day to take a deep dive into each Unit of Inquiry. My school had a virtual authorization visit in late October, and we are waiting to hear whether or not we will be authorized as an official IB school. As a candidate school, my grade level begins the year with a social studies based unit, and we just recently began our first science unit.

It's a very cool unit on the birth of rocks with a fossil find as an anchor phenomenon. This is why I was able to use my DIG Field School experience, a week in eastern Montana with University of Washington paleontology grad students, as an introductory teaser just before Thanksgiving. After each set of lessons students will return to three questions surrounding the fossil find:

1. How did the animals die?
2. How did their bones end up so far underground?
3. What happened to uncover the fossils, allowing them to be discovered after millions of years?

Students will revise their hypotheses several times as they uncover more information. Next week's lesson is about the difference between shield volcanoes and cone volcanoes and thick and thin lava. In a normal year all students would get a cup of thin "lava" and a cup of thick "lava" to blow into and try to shape into a mountain. Since the "lava" is water and a flour and water mixture, students can still do this at home. But just in case the experiments are challenge for some families, I recorded a demonstration of the process today.

My husband is amazing, and pulled out his camera gear to assist. We filmed less than five minutes of footage, but the whole process took at least half the day. I discovered after we were set up that I have no red food coloring. But I found purple food coloring. I decided that since Mrs. Conrow is known for her crazy purple hair and car, I could have purple lava for my demonstration. Hours later, I hope I was able to splice the video appropriately for the slide show that will be presented to my fourth graders on Tuesday.

It was fun, even if it was incredibly time consuming. I really enjoyed blowing into the thick lava. It was fun to try to shape into a mountain as well. I certainly hope the students are able to complete the activity on their own.

I am grateful I have a husband who is supportive of my career and a household that allows me to film science demonstrations on a Saturday morning. My son took his new kittens behind a closed door so they would not disturb the filming. My other teenager slept through the entire set up, demonstration, and clean up. How many teachers during the pandemic are facing much more challenging situations when they need to do something similar for their students? Even face to face teachers might have had to film a demonstration in order to do this activity in a physically distanced format. This year is so weird... here's to hoping that it gets better in 2021.

Kittens - My 16 year old's birthday present.