Hi Linden STEAM 5th grade families!
Yesterday we had the pleasure of meeting the 5th grade scientists and their teachers. We had a chance to introduce our organization, Science from Scientists, and ourselves, Dr. Sukow and Mr. Stanmyer. Science from Scientists is a nonprofit educational organization in which scientists bring hands-on lessons into classrooms every two weeks throughout the school year. At Linden STEAM, we’ll see all four 5th grade classes on alternating Tuesdays. We’re looking forward to lots of learning through doing!
Mr. Stanmyer is a biologist whose Master’s work is on DNA repair in single-celled organisms, and I am a biophysicist and electron microscopist, whose studies are on the structure of proteins. We are both interested in many branches of science, though, and encourage the students to ask us questions — if we don’t know an answer, we’ll have fun finding it out and getting back to them.
Our activity for the first day was a puzzle we call “The Nature of Science”. It started off as a four-piece puzzle, with each piece representing a piece of scientific data, which the kids had to assemble into a square — we called that “the conclusion”. That was pretty easy. Things got trickier when we added a fifth piece, and the puzzle needed to be reassembled and *still* form a square (but a different one)! This is an analogy for the way scientists sometimes have to revise their thinking when they find a new piece of data — something that happens all the time!
We’re looking forward to a great year!
Dr. Sukow & Mr. Stanmyer
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