{"id":13312,"date":"2018-12-11T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T23:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=13312"},"modified":"2018-12-11T15:53:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T23:53:00","slug":"kicking-off-science-in-the-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/kicking-off-science-in-the-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Kicking Off Science in the Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you happened to be visiting\u00a0Independence National Historical Park<\/a>\u00a0in late October, you might have seen some of us educators and park rangers walking around with cell phones and taking pictures of things not normally featured on the postcards sold in the Park\u2019s gift store. In addition to the Liberty Bell and the Mall, these photos included steam coming out of manhole covers, late budding plants growing along the parks\u2019 edges, sidewalk patterns made of river stones, bricks and slate, horse-drawn carriages in busy crosswalks, and close-ups of signage interrogating slavery and freedom\u2014all\u00a0phenomena<\/i>\u00a0we observed as we spent an hour or so wandering around the park one fall afternoon.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0The Wonder of Science<\/a>, \u201cA phenomenon is simply an observable event. \u00a0In the science classroom a carefully chosen phenomenon can drive student inquiry. Phenomena add relevance to the science classroom showing students science in their own world.\u201d<\/p>\n

This activity was just a piece of what we worked on together during a meeting of\u00a0National Writing Project<\/a>\u00a0(NWP) educators and\u00a0National Park Service<\/a>\u00a0rangers as we kicked off our Science in the Park project at the Northeast Regional Office of the National Park Service in Philadelphia. Science in the Park, funded by a Spark Grant from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u2019s\u00a0Families Learning Across Boundaries (FamLAB)<\/a>\u00a0Project, brings together teachers and park rangers to plan and implement programming that welcomes young people and their families into national parks to play with and learn science together. This effort emerges from a growing partnership between the National Park Service and the National Writing Project, designed to bolster connected learning opportunities within the national parks (see:\u00a0Opening the Walls of the Classrooms and the Boundaries of the Park<\/a>). It also draws inspiration and learning from a past NWP project called\u00a0Intersections<\/a>, funded by the National Science Foundation, which explored the intersections of science and literacy with youth, teachers, and science museum educators.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u2019s\u00a0FamLAB Spark Grant<\/a>\u00a0program calls on grantees to focus on creating an ecosystem that enables and encourages young children\u2019s learning across a range of settings in their lives\u2014for example, home, school, and a park. This focus emerges from research on\u00a0Connected Learning<\/a>\u00a0where we see that the deepest forms of learning cross different boundaries and settings, take place over time, and are connected to the interests that youth and families bring to those contexts. FamLAB is asking us therefore to consider how to build these kinds of connections with young children and their families, especially those often underserved\/under utilized, and to design ways that adults can serve as \u201cbridge-builders\u201d across youth interests and contexts.<\/p>\n

Science in the Park seeks to do just this by piloting science and writing activities with 5- to 12-year-old children and their families in local parks within three communities in the northeast region of the US. While in Philadelphia, we spent our time getting to know each other as educators and rangers, testing and tinkering with new ideas and technologies, reviewing related research such as\u00a0Crossing the Boundaries: Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understandings of Bridging STEM Learning Environments<\/a>, and exploring a range of science and literacy concepts together\u2014such as\u00a0phenomenon\u2014<\/i>to better understand our shared work in designing these partnerships. Next steps are now taking place in local communities, where schools, families, and local parks are beginning to think together about the ways they might design these connected experiences with youth. Through these pilot projects, we explore these new ways of working together over the semester and into the summer and we will continue to meet nationally on a monthly basis to learn from each other and support each project\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n

Proposals for work in local communities are due now\u2014stay tuned for more!<\/p>\n

Featured Image\/ Science in the Park on SIFTR
\nOriginally Published\/ The Joan Ganz Cooney Center<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A collaboration between the National Writing Project and the National Park Service implements programming for young people and their families to play and learn in national parks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":13315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[48,626,592,655],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13316,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312\/revisions\/13316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}