Last week was a busy one for the EE Kids and me. We spent the majority of the week preparing for a LIVE SKYPE session with oceanographers aboard the JOIDES Resolution. The scientists were on an expedition to study ancient sea volcanoes or seamounts off the coast of New Zealand on the Louisville Seamount Trail. The JOIDES Resolution will journey to Coast Rica on its next voyage, which will begin in three days and 10 hours from the posting of this blog entry.
Kevin Kurtz, an author with Sylvan-Dell Publishing invited us to chat with them, after his trip to our Saturday school session in December 2010.
One thing that I learned about preparing for this session was that my 4th and 5th graders were ill-prepared to create thoughtful questions for the crew. Even though they were able to fully understand the blog, created by Kevin, the questions that they submitted were ones that could easily be answered by re-reading the blog!
Therefore, I looked at this first SKYPE session as one where I modeled the creation of questions and provided them with the opportunity to practice orally presenting the questions to the scientists. From the looks of it, our EE Kids need much more exposure to research and the preparation of more "thoughtful" construction of questions.
As I shared with my students, I am glad that Georgia is finally realizing that SCIENCE is an important topic that can easily integrate other subject matters within its content.
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