Teachers Get Creative to Engage from a Distance

Students discover science in their own backyards as teachers find new ways to engage students online.

By: Benjamin Rickert, BCS Communications

Students are discovering science in their own backyards as teachers find new ways to engage students online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students in Ms. Tarantino's class show off their soil samples.

Last week, sixth-graders in Ms. Sandy Tarantino’s North Windy Ridge Intermediate science class studied rocks and soil. Normally, her students would gather samples together from a natural area for analysis in class. Instead, she challenged them to view the spaces around their homes as laboratories, assigning them a series of hands-on outdoor objectives that students could accomplish on their own. During their online discussions, students then had the opportunity to share what they observed.

“Each student found a rock outside and every couple of days we would revisit that rock to try and identify it,” said Tarantino. “Based on what we were learning, we would ask, ’Is it metamorphic, sedimentary, or igneous?’”

Another lab involved collecting a glass jar full of soil to study its composition. Students recorded details of the environment surrounding their chosen sample, such as how much sun or shade was present, and how the land was typically used. After adding water, each sample was agitated 100 times and allowed to settle overnight, revealing the layers of material in each jar. The next day, students brought their samples to class online, holding them up to the web-cam so their classmates could share in their discoveries.

“Mine has clay, sand, and silt,” one student said to his classmates.

“It looks like sand and little chunks of rocks,” said another student of her own jar’s contents.

Ms. Tarantino uses her laptop to teach students live during Virtual Days.

When Virtual Days began on March 18, Tarantino had to find new ways to engage students in the online setting. In addition to the outdoor laboratories, she incorporated new app-based songs and games into her lessons to reinforce vocabulary. She invited knowledgeable guests to speak during class. She also created video demonstrations to bring the science concepts to life. For example, when teaching about permeability and porosity, her video depicted a homemade contraption that filtered water through three different types of soil. Through her upcoming video about erosion mitigation and soil stewardship, Tarantino plans to virtually take students to a site where a road is eroding into an adjacent river.

In this new ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ world, Tarantino said BCS teachers are working as hard as ever to keep students involved and on track with their learning.

“It requires creativity, extra time, office hours, and a lot of communication,” she said. “We’re going the extra mile to pull these kids in.”

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Ms. Sandy Tarantino is a National Board certified science and social studies teacher at North Windy Ridge Intermediate School. She has taught in public schools for 20 years.

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