Rose here –
This summer I got the chance to hang out with local elementary school students and do cool science experiments. I was one of several volunteers from 500 Women Scientists KnoxPod, an organization dedicated to science outreach and opportunities for fellowship for women scientists, and we partnered with the local Freedom Schools Program, a national summer literacy program for at-risk and minority youth. As part of our partnership, we came up with some fun experiments and demonstrations of various scientific topics to get our students engaged and interested in science.
Our main goals were to show the students that anyone can do science and that the ideas of science affect our daily lives in many ways. Since we had never done this before, it involved a lot of Google searching and trying to find ways to do experiments that were fun and doable for a range of ages and abilities of students. It was helpful that the students we worked with were divided into upper and lower elementary age groups, so we could have some activities involving more reading for the older kids. But both groups were very impressive with their understanding and retention of the ideas, even remembering things we had talked about much earlier in the summer!
One of the most rewarding moments was when one of the girls who had seemed kind of shy and reserved during the earlier sessions came up to me one day and told me that she wants to be a scientist when she grows up! By the end of the summer there were other kids too who would cheer when I walked in, declare that science was their favorite subject, and try to sit as close to me as possible. This made me feel like all the hours spent preparing lessons were totally worth it. I had never done any sort of K-12 classroom presentation before so it was also a really great opportunity to get more practice explaining the concepts of science in an accessible way.
Below are pictures from when we made a pendulum and added paint to make some art and show patterns of pendulum swinging and their causes.
