Project "SEED": Science Education through Experiments and Demonstrations

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Project SEED is a 33 month program sponsored by Northeastern University to enhance middle level science teachers' use of experiments, demonstrations and projects in their classes. It is based on the well-established notion that an understanding of the basic concepts requires extensive prior experience with concrete examples of these projects. Working with an advisory group of science supervisors and coordinators from both urban and suburban Boston-area schools, a comprehensive program has been developed to train teachers to incorporate demonstrations and experiments into their individual teaching styles. The principal component of Project SEED is a four-week summer program, held for two summers, which involve workshop sessions, seminars and field experiences. Twelve day-long workshop sessions will focus on demonstrations and experiments that will give middle-school students concrete experience with the basic concepts and physical laws that underlie all of science. Topics covered include: length and time; area and volume; mass and density; pressure and weather; force, work and energy; motion; earth and the solar system; elements and compounds; optics; heat and temperature; and electricity and magnetism. Each workshop session will involve a variety of activities that can be adapted to a diversity of teaching situations and curricula. Participants will also help build museum-style exhibits. These exhibits will be designed to give the students a joyful interaction with science, spark their interest and curiosity and to provide them with some hands-on experiences which may not otherwise be available. Aiding the participants in the workshop activities and the museum projects will be two teacher interns who have been selected from previous summer workshop programs. Arrangements have been made with public utilities, private corporations and government laboratories for special seminars and tours aimed at connecting curricular material to everyday industrial and scientific practice. There will also be seminars and visits to research laboratories at Northeastern University. Prior to the summer program, two seminars and site visits will be held with the participants to assess their individual needs, interests and strengths, and the facilities available to them. After the summer program, the participating teachers will meet individually with members of the Project staff to develop a set of goals for implementing workshop ideas in their classes. Follow-up seminars and site visits will be conducted to help the teachers meet their specific goals. A formative evaluation procedure will be used to help the teachers assess how much their teaching benefited from the program. The NSF share of the project is $326,169 which is being matched by $206,952 from the institution. This constitutes a match of more than 63%.