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Year 1998-1999
Isadore Wexler School
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Grade 2: Debora Liburd
Ms. Liburd created her unit, “Ants, Beetles, Butterflies and Honeybees,” with the goal of having her students react with interest, and not disgust, towards these common insects.
 “Everything that was on the lab related to what I was doing… . These second graders were overjoyed! The reception—I didn’t think it would be that way. They looked forward to going three times a week; they wanted to go every day. And they just really enjoyed the lessons… . And then the time went by so fast! Our hour—the kids would sigh, ‘Oh, it’s time to go?’ ”
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Grade 3: Ralph Esposito and Nancy Taylor
In the Introduction to their unit, “Forest Communities” Ms. Taylor and Mr. Esposito wrote: “[Students] will collect, classify, preserve, display, and organize their experiences to make better sense of the world around them and their own responsibility to it.”
“Groups worked on projects, hands-on projects relating to forest communities. I think it was very beneficial, because the kids all got a chance to do it in a small group setting. They could keep their focus and it related right back to what they were doing in the classroom. It was all tied in very nicely… . I didn’t even think of it as a museum on wheels. I just thought of it as bringing the museum’s resources to the school… . The children that I have are short attention span, low achieving students, and it had a large, positive impact on their reading. They were reading and researching and they didn’t even know they were reading and researching! They were reading and they weren’t even thinking about it.”
Ms. Taylor was one of the Peabody Fellows who found her attitudes towards science had changed after this experience.
“For myself, when I filled out that first form, I said that I really hated teaching science. I did hate science—it’s true--I don’t have time to teach science. One thing I did learn from that, is that I really do have time to teach science. Because what I did learn was how to make science be a part of the reading program. I had always had the idea of that, but having the idea and actually doing it are two different things, and I actually did it for those 2-3 weeks. I really enjoyed it so much that I won’t say that I don’t like teaching science any more… . To be perfectly honest with you, for those three weeks I did those science [lessons], I didn’t feel like I was teaching. Just like the kids didn’t feel like they were doing reading and learning, I didn’t feel like I was teaching. I was having so much fun!”
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Leaf identification by Ralph Esposito's students. |
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