Monday, February 4, 2008

Observation: Tool of Science


"You can observe a lot just by watching." Yogi Berra

Elementary age children are just gaining a scaffold for understanding the world. They have a temporary ability to see the world through fairly clear glasses and without the encumbrances of learned biases and tastes. Try remembering the first surprising detail you noticed as a child - its not easy! Our brains are so needy for data that the first observations are snapped up into our personal observational framework almost instantly. This capacity of our students forces a large responsibility on those of who teach to be very careful about what bias we transfer to our charges. A teacher who models good observational skills and an enthusiasm for direct (also called 'hand on') learning will reap the benefits of seeing their students build their observational toolkit very quickly. The opposite will be true for the teacher who dreads science as a hopelessly complex and dead topic. I believe observation skills have amazing transferability to teaching expressive writing since the vocabulary of observation needs to be rich to be effective. Many observational tools have direct transferability to social studies and art curricula as well. The subset of observation which asks for measurement and data analysis is of course complementary to the math curriculum. A few things to try with students: Do a nature walk in the woods where two students travel in teams, one with hands on the shoulders of another. The lead student looks down, and the follower only looks up. After a few minutes of careful walking, the journals come out and the partners share what they have seen. Another good technique is to limit the field of view with a toilet paper tube. By reducing the stimuli coming in, a student can focus on the detail of a few things.

What is that floating in your soup?

Rhino sketch: Albrecht Durer was a German engraver and nature observer .....