Waunakee Middle School teacher Jessica Geissler's science classes are exploring a new way of learning science through a partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education.
As she teaches physics this fall, her eighth-grade students are approaching the subject in a different way, using an on-line textbook and computer simulations, in addition to hands-on experimentation.
As the students learn, Professor Sadhana Puntambekar and her UW students are exploring to find out how students learn, video taping and recording one of her five classes on almost a daily basis.
The students didn't know how to react to the monitoring at first, Geissler said, but "after the first day they were fine."
So far, Geissler said the project has been a success, as students are better able to understand different scientific concepts.
"The thing that I like about it is teaching them how to be and think like a scientist," she said. "It's teaching them how to use that process all the time, and it's teaching them that science is more doing rather than reading a plain old textbook and memorizing."
By seeing how concepts work in the lab, students can see how, for example the force-distance trade off for simple machines works.
"They could have before probably memorized and told me it, but now they internalize what it actually means," she said.
The method is part of a new way of teaching science where students' problem-solving skills are put to the test.
"The way that I had taught before was very much teacher-guided... but with the way that this is taught, it's more student led," she said.
The inquiry-based style of learning, which emphasizes reading, writing and communicating is in the review process by the school board, and, if approved, could be implemented district-wide next fall, Mike Hensgen, district director of instruction, said.
The fourth-year teacher said she has seen already students gaining a better understanding.
"A lot of our common assessments that we've given before were very fact based, so spewing out formulas and things like that, whereas this program that I'm doing now doesn't really focus on all the tiny details," Geissler said. "It focuses on relationships, actually understanding the how and the why and being able to explain things."
Not only do the students seem to understand the concepts better, she said, but they also enjoy the hands-on nature of the studying and spending so much time in the lab - and, of course, not having a text book to lug around.
Geissler attended a week-long workshop this summer to pick up the details of the program. She said the university provides all the lab materials and actually created the on-line text book.
In addition to the taping and recording, Geissler said she is in contact with the project leaders almost daily via e-mail and takes notes on what works and what doesn't so things can be changed in the future.
While Geissler said there hasn't been much chance to compare how the physics unit went between her classes and the other eighth-grade classes since it just ended, she has been able to tell the other science teachers what it was like.
This winter, she and the other teachers around the state who have taught or will be teaching with this method will get together and discuss it, while hearing from the project leaders what they are learning, she said. Geissler also expects to be presenting about the program and some findings at a later statewide conference with university staff.
In the spring, the teacher also plans to teach the geology unit in a similar way.
