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WEEK of October 29, 2007
@BFS! archives

Lower Schoolers in the Lab

by Jeffrey Stanley

The new Lower School science lab opened last week with a presentation to parents by the school’s new science specialist Megan Dunphy Gottlieb, Lower School Head Jackie Condie and Head of School Michael Nill. A science lab separate from the classroom is usually not a part of a student’s life until middle and upper school, but increasingly lower schools are incorporating science labs, overseen by science specialists, into their environments.

“In planning the lab, we thought about what would we want our children to do in a lab that they wouldn’t do in a classroom,” explained Jackie. “That included getting out to other area schools to see how they integrate a science specialist with a classroom. We were able to design exactly what we wanted. We were also in search of the perfect Lower School science specialist and we found one,” she said in reference to Megan.

Megan Dunphy Gottlieb began working at BFS last spring and spent the summer working with Lower School parents and faculty to get the science lab ready for its launch. Megan came from the Little Red Schoolhouse where she developed a science curriculum using National Science Education Standards guidelines prepared by the National Academy of Sciences. These standards stress hands-on, group learning.

“We’ve really moved away from learning sciences from a book,” she told the parents. “Science learning is an active process. It’s also a collaborative effort. No scientist in the world works alone.” She added that science isn’t always appropriate for a classroom. “It can be noisy and messy. It’s rarely a quiet endeavor and it shouldn’t be.”

The lab also lets Lower Schoolers engage in extended scientific projects that would be difficult in a normal classroom, such as using scale models to look at scientific concepts, such as a model of a bridge to explore how weight loads work, versus reading about it in a book.

See a chart of the Lower School science curriculum.

Photos: Megan Dunphy Gottlieb (top); parents getting hands-on experience in the Lower School science lab