VISION

Overview

The first in a series of interdisciplinary curricula designed by The Socrates Institute for schools under the major theme of VISION AND THE SCIENTIFIC HABIT OF MIND, this third grade pilot program, "Inner Visions, Outer Limits," evolved from the Smithsonian exhibit on "Science in American Life" and from parts of the permanent collection at the Museum of American History. Its purpose was to help 8- and 9-year-olds better understand the nature of humanity, our physical world, our beliefs about it, and how scientific innovations or world events have had great influence on school subjects as well as on our daily lives. By incorporating the interdisciplinary thinking strategies built into "Prismaticum", and after taking both actual excursions and virtual field trips on the Internet, the students began to discover, appreciate, and envision new connections between their diverse classroom subjects: Math, Science, Reading, History, Music, Art, etc., while still meeting the required elements of the Virginia Standards of Learning and the Alexandria Public Schools Essential Learnings and Objectives.

Prismaticum© is an adaptive, integrated approach to teaching which links related concepts across school subjects, giving learners the opportunity to better understand the concepts studied through its interdisciplinary focus. It is based on a color-coded system analogous to the colors of the spectrum as they shine through a prism, where a theme may be viewed in two ways: first in its constitutive colors, each color representing a school subject entering one side of the prism; second where all the colors have joined to become part of the focused white light on the other side, representing a coherent understanding of the many disciplines as they relate within the theme.

For two weeks in the third grade pilot classroom, students looked at the concrete tools of science that give us vision and allow us to see: the eye, microscopes, telescopes, glasses, etc. Through socratic questioning activities, they also analyzed web sites, educational games and toys to develop their own visions of how objects serve as investigative tools to interdisciplinarily teach us math, science, reading, history, art, music, or other traditional school subjects.

The teacher introduced to the students the idea of inner visions, and outer limits, to contrast inner feelings and beliefs with the potential of the outermost limits of imagination, collective genius, and experiences. This developed into a discussion of what the students already knew about different school subjects and how they might pull all this knowledge together in an innovative way so as to stretch the limits of their understanding while addressing issues of the real world.

With hundreds of magazines donated by Barnes & Noble Booksellers, the children explored visually how science was a part of their everyday lives. They assembled thematic collages, gathered ideas for their inventions, and with building materials donated by Home Depot, they constructed banners and display boards describing their work for the Socrates Festival. BJ's Wholesale Club donated ten Kodak flash pocket cameras so the children could document their Smithsonian Museum experiences (including the labs performed with science docents in the Hands-on-Science Center) and post the pictures at the schoolÕs web site for the virtual field trip. The educational toy store, ZanyBrainy, and the toy invention company, Binary Arts, donated toys and games for the children to analyze using Prismaticum, to show how school subjects are relevant to their lives: what they play with, what they read, what they watch, etc. Computer Renaissance donated software and The Internet Yellow Pages to facilitate the students' analysis of different web sites. Other local businesses in Alexandria also made modest contributions to the pilot program.

Guest speakers and parents demonstrated in brief classroom presentations how necessary it was to simultaneously utilize knowledge from several school subjects on a daily basis in their jobs. Speakers included a U.S. government nuclear engineer from The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a newspaper reporter from the Alexandria Journal, a pharmacist from CVS, a parent who is a midwife at Alexandria Hospital, a clothing designer who teaches at George Washington Middle School, a parent who is an environmental hygienist, a parent who is an optician, and a recycling center manager from Ogden Martin Systems. Students from the local Key Club at T.C. Williams High School also worked with the children to review web sites and to write up descriptions of their projects as together, they found solutions to global problems. Sample web sites included Site of Knowledge; Practical Uses of Math & Science; Tossed Salad Productions; The Imaginary Factory - Recycle Junk Into Art; and Exploring the Environment.

Observation skills learned from their visit with a newspaper reporter allowed the children to participate in an on-site field trip at their school, looking at objects quite familiar to them, but which they had never considered before in interdisciplinary terms. Each student was given a reporter's notebook and pen on a string for making brief notes. The purpose of this activity was to encourage questioning the world around them, developing keen observation skills, experimenting with and defending ideas, stretching their imaginations to make interdisciplinary connections, and developing flexible thinking.

A thematically-organized visit to the Smithsonian Museum of American History allowed the students to see specialized content knowledge in the context of the big picture, helping them to discover real-life applications of such classroom work as learning math rules, growing plants from seeds, conducting Internet research, analyzing current events, or drawing a design by hand or computer. This field trip was also used to focus the students' attention on five areas of the sciences (Radioactive Science, Food Science, Environmental Science, Clothing Science, and the Playground of Science), to better emphasize the global relevance of their inventions.

At the Smithsonian's Science in American Life exhibit, students entered the 19th century laboratory of chemists Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg at Johns Hopkins University as they argue the issue of which one actually (albeit accidentally) discovered saccharin. Remsen discounts the importance of who should benefit from the discovery, and reflects upon the ultimate aim of teaching:

One purpose of our field trip was to expose students to the ways in which visionaries developed a scientific habit of mind through their discoveries, and how their works have now become inextricably linked, for better or for worse, to all aspects of our lives. In the Hands-On Science Center, students were able to measure distances with a laser, use a Geiger counter, test water quality, look at food additives and levels of vitamin C in different drinks, study an open and closed electric circuit, work with magnets, and look at properties of reflectivity in different objects. These experiences were then used to inspire students to design a project that demonstrated their understanding of how inventors take scientific ideas (and accidents) and transform them into significant life changes.

The pilot students' inventions were then showcased at a school-sponsored "Socrates Festival" at the end of the 2-week program. Students assembled a scrapbook to document their work, and ran a Hyperstudio on-line slide show (soon to be uploaded to their web page) so that other schools and businesses may conduct virtual field trips to their Socrates projects and festival. The Socrates Festival was attended by all students in the school, their teachers, school and central office administrators, business people, high school students, parents, family members, and friends.

SCHOOL SITE AND POPULATION

From the Principal of Patrick Henry Elementary School, Dr. Lilia (Lulu) Lopez: We are a mini-United Nations with our student population representing regions from throughout the world. Our motto is "The World is a School and the School is a World." We are proud of our diverse population of 458 students. 54% of the students are on free lunch and 15% are on reduced lunch. We also serve 76 Special Education students, and nearly 80 ESL students.

TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES IN THE SCHOOL

In accordance with Alexandria Schools' Technology Initiative, launched in 1995, there is a 4:1 ratio of computers to students; cable programming, graphing calculators, digital cameras and video equipment are available in the classroom. The library has been automated to provide CD-ROM and high-speed Internet connections for Word Wide Web access. Teachers have telephones in their rooms and voice mail capabilities. Laptop computers are available for students to check out of the library and take home. Jones Communications, the city's cable provider, has laid fiber optic cable throughout the schools, allowing for two-way voice, data, and video connections with the rest of the world. The third-grade "High-Five Classroom" has five computer stations, used by all students, including those with IEPs and those in the Talented and Gifted Programs.

LOCAL CULTURAL AND VIRTUAL RESOURCES

The museums of the Smithsonian Institution are repositories of our culture, heritage, discoveries, inventions, social and economic development, influences from and influences on other civilizations. As such, they offer an infinite number of appropriate curricular themes for teaching. All nations' museums offer comparable resources, and even local art institutions will prove to be of great value for interdisciplinary curricula design, especially as much of this storehoused knowledge becomes available on thousands of electronic pages located on the World Wide Web, a gigantic and growing collection of information accessible to homes, businesses, schools, and governments.

We can now tap into this vast wealth of knowledge to help educators --- teachers as well as parents and community members --- better and more effectively face the challenging and increasingly complex job of daily instruction. By starting with museums --- both actual and virtual --- we can build a more effective and more compelling school environment.

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