Worksheets:   Hot and Cold Sugar What Dissolves (student)   What Dissolves (teacher) What Dissolves in Vinegar (student)   What Dissolves in Vinegar (teacher) Floating Eggs (student)   Floating Eggs (teacher) Making Butter (student)   Making Butter (teacher)

For current Science in Action activities, please see K-12 Outreach

Science in Action enhances science education activities at Spokane Public Schools and gives Gonzaga University students studying to become teachers opportunities to practice teaching inquiry-based, hands-on science. Our goal is to build the confidence of pre-service teachers to teach science and to provide them with a toolkit of experiments and resources that they can use in their future classroom. Community outreach programs like Science in Action are a direct fit with Gonzaga University's goals to educate and transform quality students in an enriched academic environment and develop men and women for a more just and humane global community.

Science in Action represents a partnership between Gonzaga University's School of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, and Spokane Public Schools. Science in Action supports local teachers who are interested in inquiry-based science by bringing student teachers from Gonzaga into Spokane classrooms to conduct science experiments. This immediately benefits K-12 students in the classroom and helps train current and future teachers to better implement inquiry-based science education. While these pre-service students take classes specifically in science teaching methods as part of their curriculum, we believe there is no substitute for practical experience and that our science education outreach will further enrich their educational experience.

Children are naturally curious about our world and about how things work. Inquiry-based education builds on this natural curiosity using the methods, attitudes and skills of scientific research. Acting as "mini-researchers," students have the opportunity to find their own problems and questions, formulate hypotheses, think up methods for testing their hypotheses, and then use the data they have collected to decide if the hypotheses were correct and thus try to answer their original questions. Inquiry-based education allows children to think for themselves, become critical of information they are given, develop their problem-solving skills, and evaluate what they are told. Our ultimate goal is to improve scientific literacy in our community.

Leadership for Science in Action is provided by Dr. Nancy Staub, a biology professor at Gonzaga University, who began volunteering at Roosevelt Elementary School in 2002. Science in Action officially began Fall 2007. This innovative collaborative effort between the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education we hope will serve as a model for other universities committed to improving pre-service teacher science education.

Contact:

Dr. Nancy Staub
Biology Department
Gonzaga University
Spokane, WA 99258
509-323-6636
staub@gonzaga.edu

with questions or if your school would like to participate in this program.

Specific activities for Gonzaga students:

Students participating in this program will

a) attend training workshops for each in-class activity

b) work in teams of 2 or 3

c) be placed in area classrooms to facilitate teaching science

For some classes participating in SIA, students will develop a lesson plan and then teach it to their students.

All exercises are designed to complement to specific GLEs and the WA state science curriculum.

Science in Action is currently supported by:

GU Faculty Development Grant to Enhance Civic Engagement
Rotary Club 21, Spokane WA