Hall of Science Labs Prove Stimulating for SEARCH Students
Instructors from the New York Hall of Science in Queens traveled to Huntington to work with about four dozen fourth graders in the district’s SEARCH program during morning and afternoon lab sessions that saw students learning about the human eye and its functions and one of the world’s hidden kingdoms.
The first workshop helped the youngsters understand how eyes can play “tricks” on people. But, visual perception was just one of the many activities explored. Students were placed in teams of two with one having to follow specific and detailed directions from the other, while covering one eye.
“Their partner had to instruct them in where to place a paper clip, finally being told to drop the object being held after the student felt it was close enough to fall into the cup being held in front of them,” said Maryann Daly, SEARCH (Scholastic Enrichment and Resource for Children) chairperson and a longtime teacher in the program. “The students created 3-D glasses and understood why words seem to jump off the page at them, if they chose to use a specific color.”
A second activity involved instruction about protists, the hidden kingdom world, which are tiny one-celled organisms living in pond water. The students placed an eye-dropper filled with these microscopic creatures into a deep well slide and then dropped Protoslo on top of their sample to slow down the protists. By doing so, the youngsters were able to see their creatures moving across their slide, while focusing on a euglena, a stentor or an amoeba using the fine and/or coarse adjustment knobs on their field microscopes.
“Some teams had many protists to see while others couldn’t seem to capture them under their lens,” Mrs. Daly said. The hands-on science labs helped make learning fun and more meaningful, bringing to life technical topics. Students left the workshops fired up about what they just experienced.
“Any time you can turn the students into active participants in their own learning it results in a positive and long lasting experience for all involved,” Mrs. Daly said.
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