1. Culler 6th Grade Science Club
Over 20 regular attendees
Did experiments involving Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Quality Control, etc.
Gave students the opportunity to explore their own questions
I worked with 6th grade teacher Alysa Lanning-Haack to start an after school science club for 6th graders. We met weekly and did an activity that either I had chosen, or the students had expressed interest in. One week we went to the computer lab and they looked up experiments that they wanted to try. We tried a few in science club, and I encouraged them to try others at home on their own. The students really enjoyed science club; we had over 20 students that attended five or more times throughout the year. Sometimes we had to cancel science club because either Alysa or I had another commitment. When this happened the students were really disappointed. The thing that they students seemed to like best was the chance to explore science topics other than what was in their text books. The experiments we did involved topics in chemistry, biology, physics, quality control, statistics, and others. In one activity the students were given a chance to build their own cars using only a selected list of materials they really liked this. It was fun to see all the different designs they came up with and it gave them a chance to practice with trial and error. Some of them got pretty frustrated before they found something that would work, but they were even more proud when they were successful. The best thing for me was to interact with the students outside the classroom. Their personalities would really come out and I could tell that they were having a lot of fun with science.