We spotlight Jenifer Ettinger, CRS Science Super Star honoree, who teaches at Chabot Elementary in Oakland. Jenifer led her students to compare towers and brisges, and along the way was sure to include a variety of resources for her students to utilize, while encouraging the process of learning.
May 5, 2020
We are honored to name Jenifer Ettinger, 2nd Grade Teacher at Chabot Elementary in Oakland, as a 2020 Science Super Star!
Jenifer's classroom did an in-depth comparison of towers and bridges.
She had her class collaborate to create a KWL (What do we Know, What do we Wonder, What have we Learned) chart. To elicit a class-wide discussion, she asked open-ended questions, and many students chimed in with their own wonders: How does a bridge stay up? What makes a tower different from another tall building?
Jenifer then narrowed the search with refined researchable focus questions: What are the characteristics of bridges? What are the characteristics of towers? How are they different? How are they the same?
For background research, she maintained that her students collect information from a variety of sources, such as their textbook, FOSS Science Resource pages, and articles from Britannica School.
Jenifer recommends that other teachers do utilize a variety of resources, and praised one in particular:
| "Use the Mystery Science website. Mystery Doug is a great addition to the science part of our curriculum." |
After doing research on their own, they moved onto partner discussions before eventually regrouping as a class. She calls this her think, pair, share process. Since Jenifer had them solidify their reasoning amongst partners and small groups, when they spoke as a class, she asked them to present on what they know and claim.
She was able to incorporate a previous math unit by helping them relate the shapes of the towers and bridges to the quadrilaterals they learned about.
Her students were also able to make self-connections, like "I have been on a bridge!" and "I saw a tower in San Francisco!" She even overheard them discussing the bridges and towers further during their lunch and school breaks.
Jenifer highlights the way science builds confidence in students. Science encourages students to get excited about the process of learning, in a way that allows room for mistakes and reshaping of ideas:
| "The student who is usually quiet has a lot to share in many of the explorations, because the start is always about guessing." |