Fellowship Paper
KidLab:
An Experiential Program
in Science and Art
Designed for an Urban School
Setting
by Kevin Emerson, Melissa Basquiat,
Leah Blake, Laura Fields, Anne Knight, and Kate Nissenson
The Neighborhood House Charter School
with Michael Rothman
The Project for School Innovation
Massachusetts Charter School Fellowship Program 2001
Introduction
Ask someone what is unique about Neighborhood
House Charter School (NHCS) and, without fail, they will bring up KidLab.
KidLab is a little like a classroom and a little like a museum, a little
like a laboratory and a little like an art studio. KidLab is a little like
all of these, but unlike any of them. "KidLab is learning," one
student explains, "but it's really fun." But fun is only half
the story. At NHCS the development of the KidLab curriculum over the last
five years has coincided with a steady increase in student scores on the
state's MCAS science and technology exam. We believe that this correlation
is no coincidence. KidLab helps students think scientifically, and it builds
the sort of skills and attitudes that are critical to exploring creatively.
At its heart, KidLab is this: a program in which children express themselves
through science.
The following paper describes this innovative
program as it has been developed at the Neighborhood House Charter School,
a K1-8 public school in Dorchester, Massachusetts, serving predominantly
African-American and low-income students in inner-city Boston. KidLab brings
together art and science and provides an outlet for creative, experiential
learning--something that, despite its great benefits, is rarely seen in
an urban setting.
The information presented here is the result
of research conducted by six teachers and specialists at NHCS during the
2000-2001 school year and a survey of students in every elementary school
grade. The paper is presented much as a KidLab lesson is. First, an introduction
(which you are now reading) gives basic background for what is to come.
Following this, the reader delves into the experience itself. Here,
we will present to you the story of a day in the life of KidLab in the form
of a mini-golf lesson. After that, we will observe what occurred.
In our observations, we will look at four outcomes of KidLab--creative thinking,
inquisitiveness, academic persistence, and creative doing--and how KidLab
helps foster these. We will also look at the setup and materials that go
into the KidLab classroom. After our observation, we will conclude by deducing
rules to explain what happened. Six rules (which function as guidelines
for those considering beginning a similar program), arrived at through our
discussion and which help us think about how to set up the KidLab room and
how to conduct KidLab lessons, are key to the success of the program.
The KidLab Experience
It is Thursday, and every student in
Ms. Knight's third grade class knows what that means: It is KidLab day.
At nine o'clock, half the class gets up from their chairs and tables and
walks across the hall, where they are transported to a whole different world.
On the door of KidLab are photographs of students
from years of KidLab projects; the fifth graders see their friends from
third grade and the kids who came after them and came before them. Behind
the photographs a layer of aluminum foil makes the door look like the entryway
to a spaceship.
Open the door and you are inside what Kevin Emerson, the KidLab teacher
here at Neighborhood House Charter School, proudly calls "controlled
chaos." No wall is bare. Materials are everywhere. The room is crisscrossed
by ropes: a pulley experiment going on in the fourth grade. Behind the pulleys
are projects from every grade taped to walls, hanging from the ceiling,
sitting on the terrarium. T-shirts with the body's organs painted and labeled
on them hang on a clothesline. A tremendous trash can tangled with cardboard
and duct tape plays the part of an enormous ear canal. Across from the ear
canal, under a wooden loft, is a marble roadway. Sitting next to that, a
life-sized wooden skeleton with femur and fibula labeled appropriately.
"Today," Mr. Emerson tells the students,
who are seated on milk crates at a worktable, "we are going to play
mini-golf. Who here knows what mini-golf is?"
Through initial discussion, Mr. Emerson ensures
that the studentsmany of whom have never seen a mini-golf course in their
lives--understand the idea. He moves on: "First, we are going to have
to build golf clubs." Mr. Emerson pulls out a club he has built out
of a dowel, a Styrofoam head, and a foam handle. "Then we are going
to make courses with obstacles and a hole that you have to hit the ball
into." As he says this, Mr. Emerson shows the students a sample course
he built the day before. "I will give you foam and cardboard. You'll
be using glue guns. Does everyone remember how to use the glue guns?"
The class nods.
"Now everyone remember: your golf course
needs to be challenging, but not so hard that you can't get a hole-in-one."
And off they go. One by one, they get their
dowels and Styrofoam from Mr. Emerson and sit down at the three worktables
set up in the room. Looking now and then at the sample Mr. Emerson has built,
they insert their dowel in the Styrofoam, tape on a handle, and make their
own clubs.
"That looks good," Mr. Emerson says
to Ricky as he finishes his club. "You can start on your mini-golf
course now."
As students move from clubs to mini-golf courses,
Mr. Emerson walks from table to table offering assistance, asking questions,
and making suggestions.
After fifteen minutes, golf courses constructed
of blocks of foam and curves of cardboard have sprung up around the KidLab
room. The first KidLab period is nearly over. Mr. Emerson tells the class
to clean up, and ten minutes later students are headed back to Ms. Knight's
classroom.
Later in the day, the class returns to KidLab. Mr. Emerson reminds the students
of their mini-golf work, but he doesn't need to do much to jog their memories.
Soon enough, the third graders are enthusiastically pulling out their mini-golf
courses and playing with their putters. Wandering from course to course,
Mr. Emerson encourages students to hit their balls and see how they go.
"Why won't the ball go into the hole?"
Ricky asks in frustration.
Mr. Emerson replies with another question: "What's
happening when you do it?"
"It keeps rolling into the corner."
"Then I guess you ought to work on that
corner, huh?"
After another fifteen minutes of troubleshooting
and problem-solving, Mr. Emerson returns to the front of the classroom.
"We've been doing really well today," he says as the students
pause from their putting. "I think Stanley's at three bow ties."
The students turn in unison to see Mr. Emerson raise Stanley's bow tie monitor--a
simple piece of construction paper with a Velcro bow tie stuck on--from
level two to three. If they are on their best behavior for the rest of the
day, they hope to make it to a perfect four.
After fifteen more minutes of playing, Mr. Emerson
calls the students to the center of the room, where they take their place
on milk crates.
"So, what did everyone observe?" he
asks.
Silence at first, then Ricky volunteers, "Kadijah
hit the ball real hard once and it went right across the room." The
other students laugh.
"Why did it go across the room?"
"Cause it went off the golf course."
"But how did she hit it?"
"She hit it hard."
"So, can someone tell me what makes the
ball go further?"
"When you hit it hard." "When
you whack it with the golf club."
"And what makes it not go as far?"
"When you don't whack it with the golf
club." "When you just tap it real lightly."
"That sounds like it happens a lot, doesn't
it?" Mr. Emerson says, as he writes this new rule for golf balls on
easel pad paper: When you hit the ball hard, it goes a large distance.
When you hit the ball softly, it goes a small distance.
As the discussion continues, the students make
other observations about their courses: which materials cause the ball to
bounce and which don't, which way the ball rolls ("Why won't it go
uphill? Why did it miss the hole?"). As he hears observations that
relate to physics, Mr. Emerson gently steers the conversation to stated
rules, compiling these on chart paper at the front of class.
As this second KidLab period nears its end,
Mr. Emerson reads back through the list of rules the students have compiled:
When you hit the ball hard, it goes a large distance. When you hit the
ball softly, it goes a small distance.
The ball can't move itself.
The ball only changes direction if it hits something or if the bottom is
uneven.
A day in the life of KidLab has come to a close.
Observations: What Is It?
What did you see here? You saw a teacher
leading students through an experiential process. You also saw the teacher
giving the students some information in a straightforward way. You saw students
creating and building on their own as they tested out ideas and formed hypotheses.
Many people--from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
the Boston Children's Museum, and elsewhere--have come to observe KidLab.
Most have tried to fit it into one of four categories: project-based learning,
transmission learning, science class, or art class. Here, we make brief
observations related to each of these categories, describing why KidLab
does, and does not, fit into each.
Project-Based Learning.
In KidLab, student work grows out of a hands-on project, a telltale sign
of a project-based approach to learning. Whether it is building a mini-golf
course, a skeleton, or a boat, the students start with little more than
a bundle of materials and a puzzle to solve. Following their own intuition
and inquiries, they see where the project leads them. They hit dead ends
and miscues along the way. As the students learn what works and what does
not these mistakes are as valuable as the successes. Through each step in
the project, following their own curiosity, they come up with questions,
construct answers, and meet design challenges.
Transmission Learning.
But KidLab is not solely project-based learning. Often, KidLab lessons are
very focused and hardly as open-ended as most project-based learning. When
students build a skeleton, for instance, they are told exactly what they
should build, and they are often given many of the answers. At such times,
and there are many of them, KidLab is not student-driven and not project-based.
In this sense, KidLab is more similar to a transmission model, in which
the teacher explains a concept to students, and the students listen and
understand. This model is often used in urban schools that serve underprivileged
students who appear to benefit significantly from highly structured classroom
settings.
What both the project-based learning lessons
and the transmission lessons in KidLab have in common is this: students
are involved in a hands-on exercise that helps the lesson truly come to
life. KidLab complements and balances the classroom experience kids have
in the rest of their day-to-day schooling. This is one of the most critical
features of KidLab: it is not designed to define a whole school curriculum,
but rather it serves to balance other elements of the "every day"
curriculum.
Science Class.
The KidLab program is aligned with Massachusetts frameworks in science and
technology and ties into the science curriculum used in the classroom. In
KidLab, students learn not just scientific facts and knowledge, but more
importantly they practice scientific thinking, attitudes, and skills. The
successful KidLab student learns to think creatively and imaginatively about
the human body, the motion of objects, and dozens of other things. Here
the scientific method is employed, and students are engaged in scientific
thinking.
Art Class.
Not just science, but art also plays a critical role in KidLab. Students
build things and paint things and draw things and put things together. In
KidLab, they are carpenters and sculptors and artists. Research tells us
we have more of a chance to remember a lesson when we are truly engaged
in that lesson, and engaged in a variety of ways. KidLab engages students'
minds and hands. It appeals to visual learners and kinetic learners; it
literally draws students into the lesson. By recreating what they learn,
students are more apt to remember and truly understand lessons.
So, KidLab is both art and science
class. Indeed, we view KidLab as occupying an important middle ground that
brings together science and art. This is another critical feature of the
program: it is a program designed to tie together the creative inquiry
and inquisitive creativity that are at the heart of science and art.
Observations: How Does It Work?
KidLab, as you have seen, is a sort
of hybrid of project-based learning, transmission learning, science, and
art. The outcomes that result from this work have more to do with a certain
way of thinking--a set of attitudes and skills--than with a body of knowledge.
As a result, it is sometimes difficult to measure outcomes. Our students'
MCAS science scores, however, do provide valuable evidence of progress.
To begin to quantify these outcomes, we have defined four KidLab outcomes,
aligned with the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks. Theses are: creative
thinking, inquisitiveness, academic persistence, and creative doing. These
outcomes are familiar to anyone working in the sciences, and they are critical
to fostering successful learning as students grow.
Creative Thinking
Good creative thinkers have one foot in fantasy
and one foot in reality. In the world of fantasy, they can imagine what
might be and pose tantalizing questions that lead in a thousand directions.
In the world of reality, where they test how what they imagine applies to
their actual experience, students must develop the skill of filtering through
the possibilities and deciding on something that can (realistically) be
done. Students who can successfully thrive in these two worlds are poised
to be creative thinkers, scientists, and artists.
KidLab has been designed to help children develop
their creative thinking skills and help those who have developed such abilities
succeed in ways that they may not in a traditional classroom. There are
three key ways that KidLab does this.
First, KidLab mixes fantasy and reality.
The setup of KidLab brings children into a world that melds art and science,
real and unreal. By tying real experiments to fanciful ideas, children are
encouraged to use their imagination without ever losing sight of the real-life
results of what they are doing.
Second, by presenting hands-on experiments to
children in an open-ended way, KidLab also exposes children to situations
where there is no clear right and wrong answer. Few mini-golf courses
work exactly as the children have imagined they would, and few boats sail
in exactly the hoped for direction. But each improvement and test of that
mini-golf course or boat helps children get closer to their goals, or it
enables them to discover errors they've made along the way.
Third, KidLab provides students with hands-on
experience. The opportunity to see and touch their work is particularly
appealing for many students who might not do well in the more antiseptic
world of traditional classroom learning. Students who are adept at applying
past ideas to present situations are more successful in KidLab than they
might be elsewhere; in KidLab they have the opportunity to shine.
Inquisitiveness
Every child has an inborn curiosity and inquisitive
nature. Children continually want to know more. Their inquisitiveness can
turn them in a thousand different directions. By harnessing and focusing
their energy, children can become eager and directed learners. There are
three KidLab practices that contribute to the scientific curiosity and focus
that are necessary for inquisitive children.
First, the KidLab teacher himself exhibits
an inquisitive nature. By bringing his own inquisitiveness and asking
his own questions about how the world works, the KidLab teacher models the
behavior expected of the children. This, in turn, pushes the children to
ask questions.
Second, the teacher's questions are presented
in a way that is open-ended. The questions posed to students are not
always easily answered. Sometimes in discussion they are left open, and
answers come as a result of the experience of building and testing ideas.
This allows children to follow their curiosity but with a goal in mind.
Third, follow-through is carefully incorporated
into activities. By setting up experiments and activities that simply
cannot be completed or figured out in a short time, KidLab encourages students
to be focused. In order for children to follow from the questions that precede
the experiment to the reflection that follows it, they must maintain focus
and attention.
Academic
Persistence
Too often in school settings, children are given
assignments where they know the challenge is to find the "right"
answer. If they succeed, they do well. The real world is hardly ever as
clean. To succeed in it, students need to be able to confront the same challenges
over and over again and turn failures into successes. They need the confidence
to take on challenges and the resilience to continue taking them on, even
when those challenges seem insurmountable. KidLab builds this confidence
and willingness to take risks; it does so in three ways.
First, within the KidLab, students enter
situations where they are uncertain about answers, but they are certain
that they'll get support. The activities and experiments that kids conduct
in KidLab consistently expose them to situations in which the outcome and
conclusions are unclear. As students become accustomed to this, they recognize
that often there will not be a clear right and wrong answer, but they will
have the support of the teacher as they learn to find their own answers
and determine which best answer their questions.
Second, because students don't know what
the outcome of their activities will be, often they must use trial and error
to test ideas and hypotheses. Thankfully, successes do occur, but more
often a trial is not completely successful. Students must face failure regularly
and consider how to move beyond it and use it to later meet with success.
Third, in order to encourage strategic thinking
about risk-taking, the KidLab teacher poses questions to students as they
are working, forcing them to think through what they are doing and why.
This practice provides students with an opportunity to see mistakes and
address them. The teacher provides support, but students decide how to use
it.
Creative Doing
As important as creative thinking may be, it
is only the tip of the iceberg. We want students who are creative doers.
These are students who know how to use tools and materials to turn their
imaginative ideas into three-dimensional reality. A creative doer is adept
with technologynot technology in the new sense of clicking a mouse and typing
at a keyboard, but technology in the old sense of building structures, putting
things together, taking things apart, and understanding how it all works.
KidLab fosters this comfort with technology
and design in two straightforward ways. First, KidLab engages students
in hands-on lessons. The activities and experiments that children conduct
in KidLab consistently expose them to a variety of tools, materials, and
hands-on use of both. Students who are not initially comfortable with materials
gain that comfort through their work in KidLab.
Second, KidLab exposes students to the use
of diagrams to model spatial concepts. As students work on their projects
using the materials available, they often must take ideas presented by the
KidLab teacher and translate those ideas into hands-on reality. If students
are going to try and build a working model, for example, the teacher might
draw a diagram on the board and provide students with a visual sense of
what they are after. By modeling the use of diagrams, and helping students
to turn those diagrams into hands-on projects, the KidLab teacher models
and teaches effective design.
Observations: What Do You Need?
Many who see KidLab and hear about what
it can produce agree that it's something they would like to do. "But,"
they insist, "I could never do it." We wouldn't want to
make light of this: KidLab absolutely requires support from school leadership,
and it requires a staff member who will dedicate time to it. But once you
have these two ingredients, the rest is much easier than it appears. The
following paragraphs highlight the key ingredients you may have observed
in the KidLab experience. These include: a KidLab leader, an appropriate
number of adults for the number of students involved, appropriate scheduling,
classroom tie-in, use of learning centers, storage space, display space,
methods of behavior management, curiosity sparkers, and tools and materials.
KidLab Leader.
KidLab requires a science specialist or dedicated science teacher who has
time to devote to the program. The single most important skill for this
KidLab leader to have is the ability to create situations in which children
can express themselves through science. We have found it's critical
for the teacher to have three traits. These are: an active interest and
involvement in science, strong visual skills and creativity, and a great
deal of patience. It also helps if the KidLab leader has the ability to
work with a wide range of students, creatively uses materials (as most teachers
must), and has a good sense of humor.
It is worth emphasizing that the KidLab teacher
is not some magical creature who, by sheer force of individual character,
makes the program work. We have had two different KidLab teachers at the
NHCS. After the first left, no one thought it possible that someone new
could come in. But someone did, and KidLab has continued to get even better.
Teachers "grow into KidLab," as Mr. Emerson puts it, taking on
the character of the program as they become comfortable with it.
Students per Adult.
One of the key components for a successful KidLab is a low student-to-adult
ratio. If you can set up your KidLab with less than ten students for every
adult, you are doing very well. These adults do not need to be teachersparaprofessionals,
college interns, or parent volunteers could share KidLab supervision. At
Neighborhood House, for part of the day, we reduce the number of students
per teacher by splitting classes into small groups that rotate between KidLab
and their regular classroom. This makes the student body manageable in the
chaos of KidLab, and it allows both the classroom teacher and the KidLab
teacher to better attend to students' needs.
Time Blocks. KidLab
requires a process of investigation, experimentation, and follow-up observation.
This takes time, and it is only with difficulty that KidLab can be fit into
a single 45-minute class. Ideally, KidLab provides sufficient time for students
to go through every step of the processabout two to three hours that may
be spread out over the course of a number of 45-minute to one-hour blocks.
An added benefit to these blocks, during which an entire class is in KidLab,
is that the classroom teacher gains a valued chunk of planning time.
Classroom Tie-In. At
its best, KidLab is carefully connected into the school's curriculum, with
experiments and activities in KidLab complementing science lessons in the
classroom. Classroom teachers meet regularly with the KidLab teacher to
plan science lessons together.
Learning Centers.
For the hands-on, experiential learning that happens in KidLab, it is best
to have the room divided into small learning centers where groups of up
to six students can engage in a similar project.
Storage Space. Any KidLab will require
a variety of materials and tools that must be stored from lesson to lesson.
At Neighborhood House, we have a storage closet and corners of the room
reserved for materials, totaling about 30-40 square feet of space.
Display Space.
Part of the ah-ha! of KidLab is that students see the work of their
peers and the many ways that others address the same challenge. Having at
least some display space is therefore critical to KidLab. Projects can be
taped to walls, hung from ceilings, or strung across rooms, as long as they
are seen and seen prominently.
Behavior Management Tools. In the chaos of KidLab, it helps to have some established
tools to ground children and establish behavioral expectations. These can
take any form, but we recommend making sure that you have them and that
they fit in with the feeling of your KidLab. See Appendix for some that
we find useful.
Curiosity Sparkers. When
kids enter KidLab, we want them to enter a world where everything sparks
curiosity and imagination. Little things strategically placed around the
KidLab space can help achieve this. Animals are a nice touch--an aquarium,
a terrarium, though not too many. A space for plants to grow adds interest.
A space where ongoing experiments and old projects can sit or hang, or otherwise
make themselves known, is also helpful.
Tools and Materials.
To do KidLab activities, we use wood and foam and rubber bands and plastic
cup lids. We use hammers and glue guns and saws and scissors. We have marble
roadways and candle wax and old egg cartons. The important thing is that
we never stop acquiring materials: packets of sugar and take-out trays should
never be thrown out. That cheap trash can that you used for a lesson on
sound waves can be reused for a lesson on ear canals. Find out where the
local recycle centers are. Get donations from parents. Wander the streets
on spring-cleaning day. Ideally, there'd be a workbench and closet in which
to store all these things. At a minimum, the teacher should have in place
a system that children follow in order to put materials and tools back in
their appropriate places.
Conclusion: Rules/Guidelines
A paper can only help one begin to get
the full picture of KidLab. But we hope that because this paper has, in
part, mirrored a KidLab experience, certain rules are emerging for the reader.
Based on our observations of five years of KidLab, six rules (which may
be used as guidelines) appear to be key to its success. First, in order
to foster creative thinking, a KidLab room should mix fantasy and reality.
Second, in order to build academic persistence and creative doing, a KidLab
program should engage students in hands-on learning. Third, the KidLab teacher
should pose scientific and open-ended questions to students as they are
working, questions which guide inquiry. Fourth, KidLab should create situations
in which students are uncertain they'll get answers, but are certain they'll
get support. Fifth, KidLab should have support from school leadership and
from at least one lead staff member. Sixth, a KidLab room should have some
basic tools and materials and the appropriate room setup to spark imagination
and curiosity.
Following these guidelines (stated above as
scientific rules, in keeping with the KidLab experience), we believe many
more urban schools could adapt KidLab to their own environments. Combining
project-based and transmission learning, art and science, education and
fun, the program has amazed and excited students and adults at the Neighborhood
House Charter School for five years. We end with a few words from students
who have experienced it. "At KidLab," a third grader tells us,
"we learn how to have fun and explore." A kindergarten student
explains that, "KidLab is kind of like science." A fifth grader
simply puts it, "At KidLab, I learned that you can do anything that
you believe in."
This paper is excerpted from KidLab: Tips and Ideas on How to Make
Science Engaging at Your School, a forthcoming publication in the "For
Teachers, By Teachers" series by the Project for School Innovation.
The Project for School Innovation, a unique network of charter and district
schools, furthers education reform by giving professional educators recognition
for their achievements and support to address weaknesses. For more information,
visit the PSI website at www.psinnovation.org.
Appendix: Behavior Management
Tools
Checkpoints This is a race track on which each kid has a Velcro car and
moves it around the track as he or she completes each task, reaches each
"checkpoint." This is a nice way to allow kids to track their
own progress and enforces progress, or lack-there-of, both of which seem
to be helpful. Getting all the way around the track carries no reward other
than the fact that you did it, which most kids seem to want to do.
Super Dohka Dohka Basically Plinko from the
Price Is Right. This is a game in which students get to stand on the table
and shoot a ping pong ball into a basketball hoop, which dumps the ball
into a randomizer on the wall. It's wickedly fun. I try not to use this
as a carrot, but . . . It also brings about community; we all cheer for
each other.
Call and Response I have a board of call and
response phrases so that at any moment throughout the day, I may say a specific
phrase, or just a common science word, and the careful listeners get to
shout out the response. One example is: I say, Habari Yako (Swahili
for how is the news?) and they say, Mzuri (The news is good), or
if I happen to use the word "procedure" the kids' response is
"delicious." That keeps kids on their toes.
Stanley Says I have a chart where my twin brother
Stanley, who visits periodically throughout the year, gives his opinion
of how the class is doing. I move Stanley up and down on the bow-tie scale
depending on the mood and timbre of the class. Informally of course.
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