First Day at Miles River Middle School with Science from Scientists!

Allow us to introduce ourselves…

Today your child began an exciting science program in their classroom offered by Science from Scientists. SfS is a Boston-based, non-profit organization that strives to improve science and technology attitudes and aptitudes. We send real scientists into the classroom during school every other week to teach exciting, fun, and curriculum-relevant science lessons. We will be visiting your child’s classroom every other week throughout the school year. We will bring engaging, informative, and stimulating hands-on lessons with us to supplement the school’s science curriculum.

As part of our first day, we reviewed safety procedures to be practiced when conducing labs and completed an activity called, Scientific Observation: Mystery Tubes!  During this activity students learned that to become a good scientist, you have to make specific and detailed observations so that other people will understand what you have found or tested. We introduced the steps of the Scientific Method and learned how to write a great hypothesis, test it, and rework it until the observations match the hypothesis.

For our activity, students had to make observations about what was happening in a sealed PVC ‘mystery tube’ without being able to see inside. Once they made their observations and wrote a hypothesis to explain what they observed, they worked in groups to build their own working models of the mystery tube. We finished up by talking about why many types of scientists also use models in their studies to help explain a phenomenon.

The students witnessed first hand how science involves a lot of trial and error, but when you persevere and figure the mystery out, it’s a very rewarding accomplishment! This lesson was exciting, challenging and a lot of fun to complete.  Please check the Classroom Post on our website regularly to read about the science activities that your child is participating in and to view photos from your child’s classroom!

-Beth, Tiffany, & Jenna

Get to know the instructors:

Beth_Zylinski

Beth Zylinski — Director of Web Solutions & Social Media, Instructor

Beth has always been interested in math and science and was inspired to pursue an engineering degree by her high school physics teacher. She earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and also a M.S. in Engineering Management. While working in the engineering field, she was a quality and reliability engineer focused on testing integrated circuits and electronic chips. Beth enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons, traveling and reading.

 

 

 

tiffany

Tiffany Travis – Assistant Instructor

Tiffany was born in Maine and raised in Connecticut before venturing her way to Boston for college where she fell in love with the city. Thanks to her dedicated science teachers over the years, she found herself passionate about the wonders of science. She earned a B.S. in Biochemistry in 2010 and her MAT in Secondary Education in 2014, both at Northeastern University. Tiffany has experience in both the research and education fields. She completed a unique trip with SEA Semester during which she sailed aboard a tall ship where she learned sail handling and researched the effect of ocean acidification on pteropods. Tiffany has also worked at two pharmaceutical companies as a co-op during undergrad and then worked her initial few years out of college at Joule Unlimited Technologies where she helped run small-scale bioreactors and cultured various strains of cyanobacteria used in production runs to synthesis non-biomass based ethanol as a byproduct of photosynthesis. After quickly realizing she loved helping others and seeing them learn, she moved on to teach high school chemistry and biology. She’s looking forward to sharing her passion for science and drive for learning with other students through Science from Scientists! In Tiffany’s spare time, she loves to bake, read, and travel. She’s also an avid runner and hopes to run the Boston Marathon in the near future.

 

Jenna SfS photo

Jenna Conversano – Line Editor, Instructor

Jenna received her A.B. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2011. For her senior thesis, she studied nest mate recognition in Australian meat ants while studying abroad in Melbourne. She completed her M.A. in Museum Education at Tufts University. She recently interned at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and previously worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Jenna is a Brooklyn-born New Yorker at heart, but has fallen for Medford-Somerbridge, although she will never root for the Red Sox. When not busy, she enjoys working through her Goodreads reading list, watching streaming TV, biking the Minuteman, and playing lots of kickball. 

 

 
 

 

 

 

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