What does Science mean to a child living in a remote village or hamlet, away from the din of the city? Do path-breaking inventions and discoveries find a mention in their day-to-day life? 

Science must encourage the child to make sense of their environment. It must make the child notice, wonder and question.We are all governed by the same laws of nature, we are all made up of the same basic substances and we are a speck in a vast cosmos filled with wonders yet to be discovered.

For a science educator, the greatest challenge in communicating science is that of introducing scientific thought in the classroom. Can we get a child in elementary or pre-primary school to get excited about the discovery of a new species? How do we replicate classic science experiments in a classroom with minimum resources? What does equity mean in terms of science education?

These are some of the questions we have tried to address while working with primary and middle school children in cities, rural and indigenous communities for the past few years. Through this work, we have discovered not only many exciting ways of communicating science but also encountered some very profound questions.

Is the learner a “blank slate”?

Another day in the classroom, another interesting concept to explore, what questions will the children think of today?

We started with the topic of condensation. The experiment included taking two glasses; we poured room temperature water in the first glass and a cool drink in the other. The latter glass had tiny water droplets on the surface. We asked the children where the water came from. Some children thought that it came from inside the glass, some thought there could be a leak, others thought that the cool drink inside the glass evaporated and then condensed on the surface of the glass. They were puzzled why it didn’t happen with the first glass too. This was followed by another experiment where we used cold water in both glasses and covered the surface of the second glass with a newspaper.

The experiences in the classroom have proven time and again that one of the most important caveats while communicating science is to understand the learner’s previous knowledge and address their misconceptions. It has been observed that children as young as in primary school understand the world in their own way and can sometimes have misconceptions . As educators and science communicators, we must take into account this pre-existing knowledge to construct new knowledge.

 “I think therefore I am”

The famous philosopher Rene Descartes said, “I think therefore I am”, that thinking is the proof of one’s very existence. The question in the classroom is, whether the educator is facilitating the children to think and question.

On a field day for the Science class, we aimed to explore the world outside the classroom with little tools and curious minds. The children worked in groups and were provided with magnifying glasses. The task was to select a living organism in the playground and observe it for a few minutes under the glass. In such an activity, the children are often very excited, but how do we know what the children would be thinking while they perform this activity?

We used the “See-Think-Wonder” thinking routine for this exercise (which is one of the excellent tools made available as part of Harvard University’s Project Zero, to make children’s thinking visible. Children wrote down what they saw, what they thought about the organism and what they wondered could be true about it? They came up with some very interesting questions and specific observations about the organisms like why do certain insects have hair on their legs or why do the insect eyes look different from human or bird eyes?

The children found some of the answers to the questions when they further observed the same organism in higher detail under the paper microscope – the Foldscope.

The discussion could be further extended to what is unique about a species, how it is different from other members of the same genus, the role of a species in the ecosystem to what it means to discover new species or how the environment is affected  by the decline of a species.

Back to the basics with experiential learning

It is an interesting exercise to look back and understand how a concept was discovered for the first time. The lessons learnt from the history of science can help the child to construct knowledge of a new concept. Replicating classic experiments can also help learners see that science can sometimes be counter-intuitive.

The debate is still on, if Galileo’s Leaning tower of Pisa experiment was a physical experiment or just a thought experiment. We wondered how it would be to try it in the classroom.

It seemed like a simple question, when children were asked, when two objects of different weights are dropped at the same time in a closed chamber (with no wind and minimal air), which object would hit the ground first. All the children said the heavier object would fall first. They were immensely surprised when they tried this experiment in the classroom with two stones of different weights and found that both objects touch the floor at the same time! (Of course, for the demonstration with objects having vast differences in weight like say a feather and a coin, one would need a vacuum chamber!)

From stories to facts

Children especially in primary school are excited to hear stories and it is a great way to get children’s attention. How about introducing a science concept through a story?

That day we explored the concept of where does sound come from. Though it might sound very basic and intuitive, it is often hard to explain. So, we started with the popular folk story of “The fox and the drum”.

‘A hungry fox wanders through the forest in search of food and comes across a drum. The drum makes a sound when branches of a nearby tree hit it. But the hungry fox thinks that there is an animal inside the drum that is creating the noise. Just then a tiger passes through that way and the fox invites the tiger to tear open the drum so that they can share the meal.’ We then asked the children what they thought would happen next?  

The answer can be explored by doing a simple sound experiment. A drum is created stretching a balloon on an open box and a few salt particles are dropped on to it. When sound is created in the vicinity of this drum, we can see the salt particles ‘dance’ to the sound. This helps children visualise how sound is created by vibrations in the air particles.

A day for Science

Another fun way to get children to communicate science is through annual Science Fairs or celebrating Science Day annually.

In  the month of February, we decided to celebrate Annual Science Day. But the participants and audience consisted of primary and pre-primary children. How do we engage such a young audience, we wondered? How do we make it contextual? We had a small quiz where we played bird calls and asked children to recognize the bird. Imagine our surprise when we saw that the most eager hands to go up were those of the kindergarten children. We also had a Science Fair where children chose to replicate any activity or Math puzzle done in the classroom that year. It was interesting how children demonstrated their understanding of various concepts and how they handled questions and doubts raised by the visitors.

Making the case for Digital Science content

A lazy Sunday afternoon, lying on the couch too bored to do anything serious, the hand automatically goes to the phone and before we know it, we are scrolling through reels of videos on YouTube or any other social platform.

It is known that YouTube is the world’s largest video-sharing site, but how can it be leveraged for science communication. The fact that the videos are available free of cost to anyone who has an internet connection, and that to a great extent we have achieved last mile connectivity in terms of the availability of internet through smart phones, makes it a very powerful tool indeed.

A few channels like that of Arvind Gupta, an engineer-turned-Science communicator who explains difficult concepts through simple low-cost models has found great reach among the public. We have been building our content on a similar model, tailored to the curriculum, hence enabling both teachers and children anywhere in the world to try out the experiments at home or at school with minimal resources . 

Conclusion

The joy of the child exploring and uncovering the mysteries of the tiniest life forms around through the Foldscope, the surprise of children in the classroom while replicating classic science experiments, the excitement of identifying  bird species in their surroundings through bird calls or songs, the curiosity of a child piqued by a story which explains a concept underlying the importance of contextualising science to the child’s environment.

As Carl Sagan truly said, “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” Through the teaching and communicating of science to children, it is this way of thinking that we have tried to inculcate.

 Edited by Neha Kumari