From: KDPW49B@prodigy.com (MRS RHONDA B TOON)
Subject: Mars-O-Mania
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 20:39:33, -0500
-- [ From: Rhonda Toon * EMC.Ver #2.5.1 ] -- Hello all, Seeing the Mars Night discussion, prompted me to share two activities we have conducted at our school with much success. One is an annual event called Pals-O-Mania. The other is a science "festival" of sorts. Pals-O-Mania could possibly be converted to Mars-O-Mania. In Pals-O- mania teachers get together and choose science concepts--like light and color, magnetism--broad ideas. Each teacher agrees to "host" two concepts in her room and for several weeks we mix our kids up according to topics they choose to research and cooperatively present. As a self- contained teacher I normally teach the same group of kids but during Pals-science all kids who are interested in heat and energy and simple machines, for example, might be in my classroom every afternoon. The teachers provide support and help kids locate materials, but the students themselves plan and implement a 20 minute presentation on their topic. These kids form a presentation team, research their topic and come up with a way to teach it. During the Pals-O-Mania event itself, each team mans a station which is visited by younger students on a rotating basis. Last year Pals-O-Mania lasted four days. We had approximately 100 fourth and fifth graders present demonstrations and teach approximately 200 kindergarten, first and second graders. We've had kids come up with some incredible demonstrations. One year two children (both identified as remedial) created musical instruments out of all kinds of found materials to teach about sounds. I'll never forget those guys working together on the back stoop of my patio with hammer and nails, and rubber bands and how pleased they were to show how the sounds changed as the rubber bands changed on their "design". Kids made elaborate shadow puppets, used tuning forks in water to show vibration, the list goes on and on and.... I was thinking that we could possibly have the kids take areas of study related to Mars this year. Since all of the teachers involved in this program are 'looping" and all but one will have the same group of kids next year, we could extend this event into the fall of 1997. The "festivals" in this past have mostly been simulations. In every one we have converted our media center into a hands-on interactive "museum". During a study of the ocean, we used heavy plastic to contruct a life-size blue whale and during a themed festival on space we did a simulated launch and converted a bus into a shuttle. During a dinosaur festival my students wrote and produced a video. We used it as the in-flight movie when we turned one of our mobile classrooms into an airplane so we could "travel" to a "dig site". The dig site was a large area we set up as an excavation site. Kids used brushes and small tools to explore the site, catalogue their findings, etc. During the ocean study parents set up stations all around the campus. Teachers signed up to take their students to the various sites for activities like: cleaning a mock oil spill, hearing a talk by a trained diver, exploring water density with saltwater, etc. A similar 'festival" idea could be done with Mars. Volunteers could man sites around the school and classes could visit the sites-- At our school we usually have a group of about five or six teachers who spearhead the festival, but they are always a lot of fun, and get kids talking about science! Anyway, thought I'd share my brain spurts! Rhonda