Phoenix Zoo and Arizona Science Center

Thursday 24^th March

Visit to the Phoenix Zoo to research education programs that are on offer to visiting students and teachers. The zoo is set out such that local wildlife are together and exotic species are in other themed based parts of the zoo. This would be beneficial to visiting schools as they would be able to focus students in on particular areas of the park. Education officers walk students and their teachers through the zoo and offer varying programs depending on the needs of the group.

The zoo offers a comprehensive program and lesson sequence on the conservation of water. Having this program within the context of the zoo and its wildlife would assist in making the information, knowledge and understanding more accessible to students as they would be more engaged and motivated to learn, this is superb example on contextualising scientific concepts.

Friday 25^th March 2011

Arizona Science Center

The Arizona Science Center runs a quite unique science education program for students in years 4 through to year 8. The program is an after school inquiry-based program run by staff from the Arizona Science Center at the participating school. All equipment required by the program is provided by the ASC and the school needs only to provide a teacher as a supervisor, these teachers are urged just to relax and have fun by the ASC staff. Input from the supervising teacher must be limited.

The major emphasis on the program is engagement of students in  2 hour sessions of inquiry-based learning, where students develop their own understandings of scientific concepts and processes. The after school program is written in conjunction with the curriculum outcomes and based on interesting themes. The activities are connected to standards once they have been developed.

Recently the ASC has run a pilot program which gave teachers in the after school program the opportunity to actually run the after school program themselves. The pilot program involved 40 hours of professional development that aimed to train teachers to allow students to complete inquiry-based learning. Teachers were trained through a series of interactive workshops which modelled inquiry-based learning. One activity involved teachers being told to build a rollercoaster out of piping protector cut in half and a marble. Teachers could be told to make the marble go faster or slower, to add turns etc. Another idea for this activity would be to have students or teachers build a rollercoaster and aim to have the marble travel from a height of 2m to the floor the slowest.  A variety of materials should be provided to open up the inquiry further.

Carolyn Starr explained that some teachers have trouble with inquiry-based learning as the teacher needs to limit the structure of the lesson. Good inquiry-based learning looks chaotic from the outside in and some educators have problems with this. An inquiry-based classroom is very active. Carolyn described how she assits teachers in making the transition from totally structured to inquiry-based. She advices teachers to count to 25 in their heads when they feel like they need to give a student the solution to a problem and she encourages teachers to use peer-mentoring for students who are really struggling. If a student is approached by a fellow student with advice about a solution they are more likely to question the reason for the advice than if it came from a teacher. If a teacher advises a student to add something to a project/solution they will rarely question the information. Using peer-mentoring encourages students to learn through questioning and explaining.

“Add foil to your oven”

“Why should I?”

The materials for running workshops on inquiry-based learning have been offered by Carolyn Starr and I intend on facilitating these workshops upon my return to Australia.

The ASC also runs an extensive professional development program once a year. The program involved between 500-600 teachers from across the USA. The center did attempt to cater for everyone by running a survey to determine the best dates for the program, but the results were not consistent and it was decided that not everyones needs in terms of timing could be met. The program is run during the autumn, as many teachers are returning back to school after a long summer break refreshed.

There will be 20 school holiday camps run at the ASC during the 2011 summer and this is going to be increased to close to 45 holiday camps in 2012.

The ASC has an impressive human body floor exhibit, which explains everything from the circulatory system to elements involved in the functioning of the human body. Medical students from Arizona State University volunteer on the floor around this exhibit, answering questions and explaining human body processes.