Science Super Star: Mark Spencer
We spotlight Mark Spencer, CRS Science Super Star honoree, who teaches at the International Community School in Oakland. Mark’s dedication to teaching science that plays off of students’ interests creates an environment where students can relate, and ultimately make long-lasting meaning out of lessons.
April 6, 2020
We are thrilled to recognize Mark Spencer, 5th Grade Teacher at International Community School in Oakland, as a 2020 Science Super Star!
Mark’s advice to other teachers who are interested in teaching more science is “Be Curious.”
Being open to learning something along with one’s class is an excellent way for teachers to create a meaningful science lesson – for everyone involved. Mark embodied this notion, as he and his students undertook a multitude of science topics this past year.
One of the first units his class studied this past year was about the phenomena of the phases of the moon. As a background experiment, before discussing or reading about the concepts of how, what, and why, Mark had his students spend a few weeks assigning students to observe the moon every evening and draw what they see. This process of taking a closer look at something from our every day lives is a great way to inspire wonder and mindfulness.
During the lesson part of the unit, the students used sun, moon, and earth models to understand the role of the moon on tides and the appearance of the moon in the sky,
When studying life sciences, he assigned his class to take on a worm habitat experiment. Students weighed the habitat periodically and measured different layers to detect if the habitat was changing over time. They sketched the habitat in the beginning and the end of the experiment.
After a field trip to the Chabot Space and Science Center, many of his students felt passionate about the climate change workshop they participated in. “A couple of students are now very interested in climate change because of the introduction at Chabot and some research they have been doing in class.”
To expand on his students interests, Mark created in-class science exercises that would develop their computational thinking. They observed how much paper they used in a day, and then predicted how much excess paper is used in a week, and in a year. Mark’s dedication to teaching science that plays off of students’ interests creates an environment where students can relate, and ultimately make long-lasting meaning out of lessons.