Our Lady of Grace Catholic School introduces new science program
Jack Radzanowski takes a look through the high-magnification oil immersion microscope at Our Lady of Grace School.
Third-grader Emily Maida, left, and first-grader Olivia Maida, her sister, work on a scale-balancing activity during the open house for the LabLearner program at Our Lady of Grace Catholic School.
Third-grader Gretchen Klauss works on a weight-balancing activity at Our Lady of Grace School.
Sixth-grader Joe Sherman, left, observes eighth-grader Jack Radzanowski looking through an oil immersion telescope.
Part of Jack Radzanowski’s science experiment would seem to be particularly appropriate for the middle of winter.
“We are taking uncalibrated thermometers, calibrating them using the boiling and freezing point of water, and comparing how accurate they are with actual already-calibrated thermometers,” the Our Lady of Grace Catholic School eighth-grader explained about the project on which he and his classmates are working.
Jack was among the students greeting visitors to a Jan. 24 open house introducing parents, parishioners and other interested people to the Scott Township school’s brand-new science program. Our Lady of Grace is the first school in the Pittsburgh area to implement LabLearner, which provides hands-on educational activities for all students, from preschool through eighth grade.
“Our kids have been talking about science all year, waiting and waiting for this to happen with LabLearner. They are so excited,” principal Sharon Loughran Brown said. “They think it’s fun, and they have no idea how much it is going to change the way they’ve been learning science.”
Developed by Keith Verner, former chief of developmental pediatrics and learning for Penn State University, LabLearner incorporates a “spiraling” curriculum.
“The concepts are taught over and over again, but in a progressively more complex fashion,” Diane Seybert, the school’s director of advancement, explained. “For instance, if they’re learning about matter, they might start that in preschool in a very simple way, and by the time they’re in eighth grade, they’ve built upon that so much that they now have a really good concept when they go to high school and college.”
Contracting with LabLearner, which Our Lady of Grace officially launched Jan. 12, represents the school’s commitment toward education in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, collectively known as STEAM. (Applicable schools add an “R” for religion to make it STREAM.)
“We realized that it doesn’t happen unless you have a strong science curriculum,” Seybert said. “And most teachers will tell you, especially in the primary grades, teaching science is very difficult because they have to learn it on their own. Most of the them, when they go for elementary ed, don’t have a lot of science background. The nice thing about LabLearner is that it lays it all out for them.”
For students, LabLearner gives them the opportunity to work with relatively sophisticated pieces of equipment. After learning how to use basic microscopes, for example, they can use a higher-magnification oil immersion microscope, “something that you’re not going to see typically until high school or college,” Seybert said.
Nearby in the school’s lab is a spectrophotometer, an instrument to measure the amount of light of a specified wavelength that passes through a medium.
Meanwhile, younger students learn about base concepts involving the likes of time, numbers and measurement, eventually paving the way toward more advanced subjects.
“What we’re already seeing is our little kids going home and saying, “Can I have a science kit?” Seybert said. “This is what we want. The research and the studies have shown that we don’t have enough students ready to go into STEAM professions.”
From what they’ve seen so far, Jack and his fellow eighth-graders are excited, too.
“It’s very cool,” he said. “Everything’s new.”