Middle School Science: The Element Baby Book Project

Connecting learning with the joy of exploration and experimentation in Middle School Science

 

An Interview with Carolyn Sohn, Middle School Science teacher

 

Today I’m talking with Carolyn Sohn, the middle school science teacher, about Science at Cambridge Friends middle school. Carolyn teaches sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students life science, earth (and space!) science, chemistry and physics. And her enthusiasm for science and her unique approach to teaching makes the CFS science program pretty special. She talks about the program in general and then takes a deep dive into one of the favorite 8th grade projects, the Element Baby Book. 

 

 

Thanks for talking with me today, Carolyn. Can you give an overview of the science program at CFS? What grades do you teach science? What subjects or topics does the program cover?

 

There are a couple different ways to approach teaching science in middle school. One is a more integrated approach where you’re doing a physics unit, a biology unit, a chemistry, as part of every year. I have opted to not do that – at CFS, the program focuses on one subject each year.

 

Sixth grade is life science, mainly starting with cell biology and then going into more about genetics and evolution, ecology, –  the big picture stuff happens in this year.

 

Seventh grade is Earth Science and a little bit of space science starting with rocks, minerals, going into rock cycle, and then into geology, big geology concepts. Six graders like the extreme geologic events, like earthquakes, volcanoes, the tsunamis, so we spend some time on those – the exciting ones – it’s fun for the kids. After that they do geography and mapping, and I try to include things like how GPS works – Google maps type stuff – how do those work? It makes it relevant for the kids. And then after that, we do a big unit on weather and climate, and that is when we talk about climate change. We use a book called Urgent Message from the Hot Planet as a guide. I find that it really helps me as a teacher to guide those discussions and to guide that kind of unit because otherwise I can feel like, okay, well, there’s this big climate change and it’s all such a big thing. How do you start? How do you talk about it? How do you not make it overwhelming? We can focus on the science here, but also what people are doing to try to fix it –  trying to give students a sense of the urgency of it without making it panic-inducing. From there we touch on atmosphere, our solar system, and then exoplanets, because that is really where modern astronomy is right now, looking for potential life on other worlds. 

 

In eighth grade, we do Chemistry in the first half of the year, and Physics, the second half – the unifying ideas of physical science – and they do complement each other really nicely. I don’t like doing chemistry and physics until at least eighth grade because the concepts are so abstract and I feel like you can go more deeply into it. And they can engage as a group, bounce ideas around together.

 

“You get so much more joy out of the exploration and the curiosity when you don’t know what you’re supposed to do next.”

 

I find that life science in 6th grade really hooks them into science. 7th grade I’m working on making more exciting every year and taking things up a level. I really think it’s cool, but I know that because they’re such big phenomena, it can be hard to make it exciting. And then 8th grade is Chemistry and Physics, they always love it.

 

 

I’m curious about CFS – being a Quaker school – it’s a pretty unique place. Does that influence how you teach or how you approach materials or projects or how the students engage? Is there anything different about science at CFS versus another school? 

 

I grew up in public schools, and I first started teaching in public schools, although they were very well funded public schools, and that can be a huge difference. And they are very different – traditional grading system and curriculum schedule. But at CFS, by taking away the grading and doing more benchmarks and holistic assessment, you have the freedom to spend more time on things, take more time on a specific subject, or this particular group needs more time on it to make it a high quality project. I can do that. And so it’s more tailoring it to the kids that I think makes a big difference.

 

The freedom to use many kinds of assessments, to see how kids are learning, is great. They don’t just have to take a test. Or they don’t just do a project, right? Or they don’t just do a lab, it’s all of these. If a kid doesn’t always test well, or if a kid doesn’t have a great time with an art-based project, they’re going to have something else that can help them shine, that they feel confident or capable in.

 

“So basically you are in a lab, you are giving students materials, you are making sure they know how to use them safely and effectively, and you are giving them a guiding question. And you’re saying figure it out. I am not going to give you a step by step list of what you need to do. Experiment. That’s what science is about.”

 

Let’s talk about the Element Baby Book Project. Can you tell me about that project – the origins, what it is, what do kids learn? 

 

 

The first school I worked at didn’t have this project, but they had something similar, and I knew I wanted to take that and create my own version of it. The project that I had done my first year was already part of a standard curriculum – it was an element superhero. That was kind of neat. So I knew I wanted to do something in that vein. I am also a member of the American Association of Chemistry teachers, which is part of American Chemical Society – I just do this for my own professional growth – I like being a part of a few different professional organizations. I’m a member of the National Science Teachers Association as well. But the Chemistry Teachers Association has a huge, huge online site that has tons of resources for teachers who are teaching chemistry, either at the elementary, middle or high school level. So a lot of times, I’ll use their materials as a starting point, and they had an element baby book project. And I thought “Oh, that’s cool.” 

 

 

And I I took it and ran with it a little bit, changed it to fit with my teaching and goals for the students. But the kernels of the idea were there, and I was just like, that is hilarious let me try that.  So the whole idea is each student picks an element – I love doing projects where each student gets to pick something and make it their own. I think it allows for students to really become invested in that particular thing because it feels like it’s yours. So take lithium – if you were to choose that, it makes you feel like you have a sense of ownership of it. You look at a periodic table after you’ve done the project, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s my element.” So the end goal is for them to create a very tongue-in-cheek baby book about a particular element that they have adopted as their baby. Which is very silly, but it’s silly enough that it disarms them a little bit.

 

One of the biggest things they have to do with this project is to translate the properties of that element into a personality. So if they were to choose sodium, which reacts violently with water and will literally burst into flames, they could talk about how their child is very emotional and volatile,  prone to temper tantrums – have some fun with it, translating it, like a metaphor. So the personality and emotion part captures state of matter, room temperature, boiling point, melting point, how reactive it is, that kind of thing.

 

Another part of it is drawing models of the element and the most common isotopes, which reinforces the idea in isotope being just the same element, different number of neutrons, and it reinforces the idea that you have different versions of the element,  but the protons and the electrons are the same. And they create at least one picture of what the element looks like in real life, and also draw a picture, diagram, or chart with all the elements in the same group as your element baby and what are the characteristics that they share. That connects out to the rest of the periodic table a bit, makes a connection. Some of the kids have fun when they are choosing their elements, they’ll intentionally choose some that are in the same group as one of their friends. 

 

Then there’s what I call “hopes for the future.” Write a narrative about what you hope your baby will do when it grows up. So you’re just including uses for the elements, how it’s found in nature, what other elements the element is often found with. So, coming back to the sodium example –  one of the kids this year who chose sodium, said in the hopes-for-the-future part, “I hope you continue to be best friends with chlorine because sodium chloride.” And it was brilliant, you know, it makes that connection. family, sticking together.

 

They have to do citations in APA format which by the eighth grade, they’ve done at least a couple of times. I don’t do that for every single project, but I try to make sure there’s at least one project every year that they have to use APA format for so they’ve seen it and they’ve used it. 

 

 

Any other thoughts you’d like to share about Science at CFS?

 

Once the students get to the eighth grade level, I very intentionally mix in content that is at the high school level. If you don’t have the pressure of a grading system that weighs on you, why not try? And they have a chemistry midterm and a physics final so they have to take a test that covers half of the year’s material. It’s a good preparation – it’s intentional because there’s no stakes. Because at some point, you’re going to have to take tests. 

 

And the way that I approach labs with the kids. The way I was taught in grad school at George Mason University is to teach inquiry-based science. Which ties in nicely with the Quaker approach to teaching. So basically you are in a lab, you are giving students materials, you are making sure they know how to use them safely and effectively, and you are giving them a guiding question. And you’re saying figure it out. I am not going to give you a step by step list of what you need to do. Experiment. That’s what science is about.