Details

What: Measure C, a parcel tax of $320 per single-family home and $150 per apartment unit for the next five years to support Davis classroom programs

When: Davis voters received their ballots in the mail last week and must mark and return them by March 6

Where: Mail ballots to the Yolo County Elections Office, 625 Court St., Woodland, or drop them in a secure box at the Stephens Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St., Davis

By Kathy Froman, Sarita Cooper, Kathy Gill, Wayne Hill, Megan McKenzie, Paula Bradley, Cliff Dimond, Sherri Sandberg, Kristie Dunbarr and Nancy Chatteinier

Measure C will preserve and continue to fund elementary science instruction programs. Why is this important? Davis Joint Unified science teachers would like to add their voices to why science should continue to be taught the way it is now at the elementary schools. We believe that the passage of Measure C will continue our tradition of science excellence.

We feel it is vital that science be taught in grades 4-6 by a science specialist in a pullout program for the following reasons:

Science is a core subject and this school community has invested a tremendous amount of resources into science labs and the science specialists who staff them. In fact, the elementary science prep program has existed for more than 20 years.

Because of this, classroom teachers have logically focused their professional development on other subject areas, and thus the vast majority have no current background in the content standards for fourth- through sixth-grade science nor in current pedagogical techniques for science.

Most science specialists, on the other hand, have college or post-graduate degrees in the sciences and many have trained for 40 to 100-plus hours during the past three years to develop additional expertise. If classroom teachers are expected to teach science, they will need ongoing support and professional development training provided to them, 80 to 100 hours minimum during the first two years.

We observe and recognize that students who often struggle in traditional classroom settings, including special education students and English learners, are much more successful in the science lab. We believe this is related to the lab-based nature of the program, as well as the particular expertise of the science teachers in teaching the content, language and processes associated with science.

Over and over, we have seen the science lab become another hub of the school. Students come into the lab during recess, lunch, before and after school  to visit the pets, water the plants, check the barometer, use the microscope to examine the beehive they found, try to identify a rock, check out hatching chicken eggs, turn the compost, and so on.

We believe this curiosity is natural to students and would not be available to students if the science lab is dismantled because of lack of funds.

The lab also serves as a resource and museum for all other classroom teachers at the school site. Teachers know they can find animal skulls, petri dishes, liter beakers, mineral samples, funnels, grow lights and almost anything else they need.

Science is messy. You need a lab with a sink and a cabinet full  of glassware, plastic bins, graduated cylinders, thermometers, goggles, spring scales, balances and so much other equipment that to spread it out to every classroom would not make sense. The school district adopted the lab model so that every student would have access to equipment equally. This program has worked phenomenally well.

The school board adopted FOSS (Full Option Science System) for grades K-5. FOSS is a research-based science curriculum developed at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley. According to its website, “The best way for students to appreciate the scientific enterprise, learn important scientific concepts and develop the ability to think critically is to actively construct ideas through their own inquiries, investigations and analyses.”

We could not agree more. Teachers at all elementary grade levels recommended the adoption of this curriculum because of the developmental appropriateness of “hands-on” science for elementary aged children.

Fourth- and fifth-grade science covers three separate science strands — physical, life and Earth science — and it is difficult for any teacher to cover the breadth of this material. District elementary science teachers meet regularly to share successful lab activities and assessment strategies that are the most effective for our students.

Science teachers also are aware that fifth-grade students will be tested on fourth- and fifth-grade science curriculum. We strive to streamline our instruction to make sure that all standards are covered by appropriate lab-based activities.

Sixth-grade science is a yearlong course of Earth science and aligned with the seventh- and eighth-grade textbooks. It is considered to be a junior high science course and, for this reason, especially needs to be taught by a science specialist as it would be in junior high.

Finally, elementary school science labs are the breeding grounds for a love of science. An early understanding of scientific concepts will prepare our students for the increasingly technological future they are facing in the 21st century.

Universal access to science should be a staple of the modern elementary school environment. We are producing the students who will fill the AP chemistry classes at the high school and the students who do always wonder “what would have happened if …?”

— Kathy Froman, Sarita Cooper, Kathy Gill, Wayne Hill, Megan McKenzie, Paula Bradley, Cliff Dimond, Sherri Sandberg, Kristie Dunbarr and Nancy Chatteinier are science teachers in the Davis Joint Unified School District.

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Leslie Whiteford works with students Ella Rose, left, and Allegra Starr on an experiment using a microscope in the Willett Elementary School science lab in 2008. Whiteford was a science teacher then but now is a regular classroom teacher at Willett. Greg Rihl/Enterprise file photo

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