COSI gives youngsters a chance to learn outside the typical classroom setting
Would you know the difference between kinetic and potential energy? Thanks to a recent trip by COSI (Center of Science and Industry) to Holmes County, students at Chestnut Ridge, Wise and Millersburg got a hands-on look at those scientific topics and many more. COSI visited the area last week, including a Friday, April 15 stop at Millersburg Elementary.
The COSI On Wheels program begins with a high-energy 45-minute assembly that is designed to get kids excited about the possibilities that lie ahead in the day. After the initial assembly, the learning continued all day as students explored 10 interactive stations in smaller groups, where they got plenty of hands-on time to examine the world of science and energy.
“It’s a fun day for the students because it is so hands-on,” said Millersburg Elementary teacher Susan Edinger. “The kids hear the vocabulary part of it, and it gives them a great head start, and they get to have fun experimenting with the different setups in a setting that they don’t get every day.”
Learning outside of the general classroom is something that COSI is proud to promote, and Nick Steinbrecher, COSI outreach educator, said that taking learning opportunities from COSI out into the schools where kids can learn in a whole new way makes it exciting for him as an educator, for the members of COSI and for the school teachers, who can pick up some fun teaching techniques and energize their students through the out-of-classroom experience.
“This is just exciting, hands-on stuff,” said Steinbrecher. “Our main goal is to make this so much fun that the kids won’t even realize that they are learning. We just kind of sneak that learning in there. What we view this as is an in-house field trip for the kids, and as schools continue to cut back on field trips because budgets are tight, we feel like we can bring an exciting alternative directly to the schools through our program.
“These schools we visit have some amazing teachers, and they do a great job, but anytime we can bring something exciting and fresh into the schools, it provides an even more enlightening experience for the kids, on top of everything else that they are learning.”
Stations littered the gyms at all three schools, with students learning about friction and resistance at the water wheel station, finding out how much work it takes to generate enough energy to make different light bulbs work, or even see how sound can make energy, where a tuning fork could make a bowl of water spring to life. There were also circuitry stations where power was generated through a potato, and an example of how a scrubber system would work in a power plant.
Students were free to bounce around from one station to the next, where parent volunteers helped to operate each of the experiments.
COSI has taken its show on the road throughout Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana, and Steinbrecher said they will go wherever they can to promote the sciences in the name of education.
“It’s fun to see the kids excited about this, because that means that they are into it, and when that happens, they are learning because they are paying attention,” said Steinbrecher. “It’s fun to see the light come on in their head when they finally get something.”
The COSI On Wheels program begins with a high-energy 45-minute assembly that is designed to get kids excited about the possibilities that lie ahead in the day. After the initial assembly, the learning continued all day as students explored 10 interactive stations in smaller groups, where they got plenty of hands-on time to examine the world of science and energy.
“It’s a fun day for the students because it is so hands-on,” said Millersburg Elementary teacher Susan Edinger. “The kids hear the vocabulary part of it, and it gives them a great head start, and they get to have fun experimenting with the different setups in a setting that they don’t get every day.”
Learning outside of the general classroom is something that COSI is proud to promote, and Nick Steinbrecher, COSI outreach educator, said that taking learning opportunities from COSI out into the schools where kids can learn in a whole new way makes it exciting for him as an educator, for the members of COSI and for the school teachers, who can pick up some fun teaching techniques and energize their students through the out-of-classroom experience.
“This is just exciting, hands-on stuff,” said Steinbrecher. “Our main goal is to make this so much fun that the kids won’t even realize that they are learning. We just kind of sneak that learning in there. What we view this as is an in-house field trip for the kids, and as schools continue to cut back on field trips because budgets are tight, we feel like we can bring an exciting alternative directly to the schools through our program.
“These schools we visit have some amazing teachers, and they do a great job, but anytime we can bring something exciting and fresh into the schools, it provides an even more enlightening experience for the kids, on top of everything else that they are learning.”
Stations littered the gyms at all three schools, with students learning about friction and resistance at the water wheel station, finding out how much work it takes to generate enough energy to make different light bulbs work, or even see how sound can make energy, where a tuning fork could make a bowl of water spring to life. There were also circuitry stations where power was generated through a potato, and an example of how a scrubber system would work in a power plant.
Students were free to bounce around from one station to the next, where parent volunteers helped to operate each of the experiments.
COSI has taken its show on the road throughout Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana, and Steinbrecher said they will go wherever they can to promote the sciences in the name of education.
“It’s fun to see the kids excited about this, because that means that they are into it, and when that happens, they are learning because they are paying attention,” said Steinbrecher. “It’s fun to see the light come on in their head when they finally get something.”
Published: April 19, 2011
