May 2012 This Month’s Activities
Our Superspark: This month’s SuperSpark™ is deceptively simple. It describes an interesting, real-life problem, and asks students to come up with solutions to that problem. This is just the sort of thinking that comes in handy so often in doing science. But it also comes in handy very often in normal life.
This month’s SuperSpark addresses the following learning standards:
- Formulating hypotheses
- Making observations/gathering information about the world (aka “Observing the world from a scientific perspective”)
- Communicating ideas to others, clearly, concisely, and logically.
Our MiniSpark: This month’s MiniSpark also picks up on the theme of asking questions. We’re surrounded by interesting questions, if we only take the time to look around us and think about what we’re seeing.
Our Science Around You this month was inspired by the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, held last winter at Madison Square Garden in New York City. What goes into selecting for particular traits in breeding animals, or plants, for particular purposes? The activity opens up lots of interesting ideas for kids to think, explore, and talk about.
And don’t forget to check out and comment on this month’s Blog, about why science courses, if taught properly, present wonderful opportunities for kids to learn some basic and very important life skills. Read it here.
The Daily Tweet: This month Dr. Jan will be in Scotland attending the World Fisheries Conference in Edinburgh, and then in Norway doing research at a marine fisheries laboratory there. He’ll post a tweet whenever something interesting happens during the trip! Stay tuned!
©2012 SciSpark.com
