Science Super Stars: Nicol LaCava and Carolina Equihua-Cerda
We spotlight Nicol LaCava and Carolina Equihua-Cerda, CRS Science Super Star honorees, who teach at the International Community School. Nicol and Carolina worked on building up students’ observational and evidence-based skills by creating experiments that work with monitoring butterfly, plant, and mealworm specimen.
May 6, 2020
We are thrilled to recognize Nicol LaCava and Carolina Equihua-Cerda, 2nd Grade Teachers at the International Community School in Oakland, as 2020 Science Super Stars!
Nicol and Carolina worked on building up students’ observational and evidence-based skills by creating experiments that work with monitoring butterfly, plant, and mealworm specimen. These skills are vital for their students to be able to support hypotheses and claims later on when designing their own experiments. While the teachers acknowledge Science may seem intimidating at first, teachers should not be scared to begin teaching the subject:
| “Don’t be afraid to just start. Science is messy and sometimes things don’t go as expected, but anything that happens is a learning experience.” |
The teachers used the life cycle of a butterfly to teach their classrooms about metamorphosis. After the class received caterpillar specimen, they had a class-wide discussion on what they thought these animals were. One student recognized them as caterpillars. From there, they predicted the life cycle, based on the mealworm life-cycle they had discussed earlier in the year.
Students supported their claims with evidence written in their notebooks. As any experiment progresses, Nicol and Carolina encourage students to draw pictures and write about the process of what is happening. The teachers have content language objectives that they use as the focus for their students’ notetaking.
After writing their initial notes, there are additional class-discussions, for everyone to share their ideas through a science talk. Often, it is through discussion that students are able to come to a better understanding of what happened. (For example, when some students’ plants stopped growing, despite being well-cared for, and students coming to the realization that some plants will stop growing after reaching a certain height.)
As Nicol and Carolina continue to create relatable science lessons, students are excited about interconnecting science lessons to their daily lives themselves. Nicol and Carolina had planned on setting up a classroom rock collection, but many students brought in their rocks for show-and-tell after starting the Earth Science unit, before the teachers had announced their plan to the class!
Nicol and Carolina are amazed by the way hands-on science can engage students, and illustrated one child in particular:
| “I have a new student who doesn’t speak English and barely speaks Spanish. Science has been a great way for her to fully participate with the hands-on lessons and with drawing her observations.” |