Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Stuck in a school with lousy science

Any ideas for on-line science courses for a 7th grader? We can opt her out of science to "home school" her in science, but I'm not qualified to teach her science. She's wizzing through Algebra in 6th grade and loves it. Next year she'll have geometry. She's never had good science. Any ideas?

Thanks!

If you have access to science museums and a flexible schedule, then the home-schooling component might just be time absorbing everything and all of the discussions at the science museums. All of the Smithsonians are free. Use all of the science channels. Check the on-demand programs and science news. Visit different libraries / special collections like the ones at universities. Use computers for information. National Public Radio has science Fridays.

Science museums (if they have not been altered to fit an idea of what is appropriate for a 'child's club' that can be too low a level) are fantastic places for gifted children.

The regular class time in a school setting can provide an idea of what it could be like to work in a lab, but, there are real issues in those settings for people who learn differently.

We are trying to find the right balance, too. Reach out to the scientific communities closest to you. Find the annual science fair for a large metropolitan area. Order or find the library with the scientific journals like Nature. Keep in mind the issues around the debate (Creation, Evolution, Both). Check out Bill Nye the Science Guy who was on C-Span maybe a week ago on that very debate. If you are not opposed, Darwin's Origin of Life makes for a nice text. Look up Jane Goodall's kids' club about nature. There are some students around us who are discouraged from exploring science because their parents think the subject will lead them away from their religion (very touchy subject), but there are plenty of people who believe that science and creation are compatible depending on interpretations. Good Luck and great job helping your child. (Sometimes I joke to my spouse that we might have to move to Asia for a while if we really want science education below university level; humor helps in these situations.)

Right there with you, namaste.

My 6th grader is advanced to 7th grade science, has placed out of 8th grade in my mind (but not entirely in the school's), 9th grade physical science is a joke (the school is beginning to recognize that, though otherwise required in 9th), and the HS biology teachers are evidently detrimental to the love of science.

Some of the issue is that my child is ready to learn the habits of scientific thought and problem solving beyond parroting the scientific method. Many middle schoolers are not yet ready for this cognitively, which is a lot of the problem with MS science. DD has a huge amount of content knowledge, though with some holes betraying the self-taught nature of her learning. Science is also inherently active. I'm an active scientist (professor), and I don't teach with computer animations because students don't learn effectively nearly as well as they do from active learning.

So, in finding her a science program, I'm looking for something that
*Teaches problem solving, scientific thinking, and the subject-specific content.
*Provides as much hands-on learning (computer animations kept to a minimum) as possible.
*Teaches that science is quantitative and uncertainties matter.

I can teach this, though I would struggle with the hands on part due to my own time pressures, and lab facilities aren't of the nature she'd need.

There are online courses all with significant problems (http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....cs/181161/Science_online.html#Post181161 Stanford Science online might be an exception), and the synchronous nature of the Stanford course would be potentially a problem considering that my child is still in school and we're in a different time zone.

If you have the time and energy, Nebel's Foundations of Scientific Understanding is good (though the tides section leaves something to be desired), but will take significant parent input.

We're currently thinking of leaving DD in the school's science class for next year and finding a local college student to mentor DD in the practical and quantitative aspects of science, and put her into the 10th grade biology holding our noses when she's in 8th.

Thanks for your responses. I need to re-read them and figure out what to do. Here's a second question. If my DD gets excellent math, will advanced science in HS be doable for her, even lacking good science foundation in MS? She's super mathy.

thanks

If she's good at solving applied problems and has her own home-grown interest and background in science, she should probably be fine.

A big concern for me - a professor in a STEM field and mother to a girl - is extinguishing the love of science through bad teaching and negative experiences. 4-8 grade is when girls get "taught" to not like math & science.

Check out the prereqs for the honors/AP HS science classes. (Our honors Chem has Alg II as a prereq, for instance). Would it be possible to advocate for a subject acceleration in science to a point where the math prereqs are used promptly. That is, in our case, have her taking Honors Chem the year after she takes Alg II (so, 8th grade?). Then she'd want to take Bio next year. Make sense?

In our house, we have maturity and test taking skills as additional concerns about bio next year (on top of bad teaching).

We've been asked to have DD take the ACT for the science section. The science section is one of scientific reasoning more than content. You might want to look into that if it would help the school in an acceleration discussion.

She'd take Alg. 2 in 8th, if they offer it. (If they offer it, or I might have her do AoPS for that), then go to HS where I'm not sure what the science track is. Good suggestions to check pre-reqs.

She watches a lot of science programs on TV with her dad. She's very interested in how things work. Loves myth busters. Feels she's learned nothing in 6th grade science this year except for elementary genetics, which she liked. She and I spent some time trying to apply it to Harry Potter...how can two magical parents have a squibb, etc.

{Any chance you could move here and we can pool resources? Your kid sounds like a perfect match for my kid.}

Fish around your neighborhood to see if you can find any sciency families that have been through the high school science track. Get a sense for how the program is.

Math - the school should bus her to the high school if the middle school doesn't offer it. It would work out well to do science there as well if that's the case. Would skipping 7th grade science be a possibility, getting her to the HS curriculum one year sooner?

If she can homeschool science, have a look at Supercharged Science - it's largely self-directed and full of hands on experiments that will lead her to the knowledge and understanding. Couple this with some cool books on the science topics that interest her and she should be good to go onto more advanced science later on from what I have heard say.

Depending on where you are IRL, there may be options for Saturday or summer enrichment at various local universities or science museums. I wouldn't necessarily count on that for full academics, but it can provide access to lab space and experiments that might not normally be feasible (or desirable -- dissections, ewww) at home.

I don't have any good suggestions. But I've been there DS struggled with science last year because it was too easy. Then I had to fight to get him into Biology this year. Most junior high science in my state is a JOKE. It's language based, meaning it's more important to memorize vocabulary than learn actual science.

Good Luck