For humans, if your home has a recognizable scent, that may or may not be a good thing. But for bees, it is a necessary part of life, and of finding its way home. Bees find their way to their own hive because of a distinct scent that they can recognize. If you want to see a real beehive up close, and safely, you can even come to the Museum and see our beehive exhibit, made possible by the Junior League of Miami.

Because bees are are so beguiling in many ways, they are the subject of one of the Museum’s Early Childhood Hands-On Science (ECHOS) curriculum units. After receiving training on the materials from Museum education staff, pre-school teachers throughout Miami-Dade County and Head Start schools, lead the children in exploring their world, as well as the bees’ world. The children learned first-hand that bees know which hive is their own only by the scent, by becoming bees themselves. Each was given a cup with a scent, and they had to explore their classroom to find the hive that matched their scent. But they did not want to stop exploring even after they found their hive. One wanted to draw his own beehive based on the ECHOS Busy, Buzzing Bees book, one wanted to see how the beehive model in the classroom compared to photos of real hives, and a couple wanted to match up the scents of all the “hives” in the room. These children in the photos below are true explorers.

Last Saturday, ECHOS teachers and teacher assistants came to the Museum on a quest to become prepared to host the Head Start Museum Family Day. Both ECHOS and Head Start are all about creating environments for young children to learn and develop in a safe and educational environment. This workshop in particular focused on the upcoming Head Start Museum Family Day, as well as identifying new ways to involve parents in ECHOS activities – with the expectation that teachers would then incorporate these strategies at their respective centers. As part of their “Quest” at the workshop, teaching teams explored museum exhibits that had been selected by ECHOS staff to help deepen their understanding of science concepts that are presented across all 9 ECHOS units. Throughout their Quest, teams compared features of live birds at the Museum’s Wildlife Center, learned about shells and fossils with “Fossil Frank,” observed bees at work in our new Beehive exhibit installation, and were even challenged to estimate how many gallons of water are in the large fish tank in the Sea Lab. Three teams guessed the exact number of gallons, and won prizes. Can you guess how many gallons? Scroll down to the photo from the Sea Lab to find out! (The answer is in the caption.)

This teacher was fascinated by this horseshoe crab shell, which she had never seen before. Have you?

One of the quest challenges was to spell out your own initials using these movable magnetic gears.

Teachers observed bee pollen and butterfly legs through microscopes.

There are 3,000 gallons of water in that large tank! How close was your guess?

Let ECHOS Year 2 begin! In the second week of September, just in time for back to school, ECHOS staff delivered 38 material kit sets to 38 classrooms at 21 Head Start childcare centers. Teachers of local Head Start centers across Miami Dade county are ready and prepared for a great year with materials needed for the first three ECHOS units: Rainy Weather, Feathered Friends, and Beginning Botanist. This year is sure to bring growth and learning in science to both teachers and children as another year of ECHOS implementation begins.

]]> http://www.miamisci.org/blog/beep-beep-special-delivery/feed/ 0 http://www.miamisci.org/blog/a-new-year-for-echos/ http://www.miamisci.org/blog/a-new-year-for-echos/#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:12:06 +0000 admin http://www.miamisci.org/blog/?p=2229 Continue reading →]]>

A week before children headed back to school, Head Start teachers were already getting re-energized for ECHOS at the first workshop of the year. The Museum’s Early Childhood Hands-On Science (ECHOS) initiative, in collaboration with the University of Miami’s Department of Psychology, is a comprehensive science curriculum and teacher professional development program being tested in 90 Head Start classrooms throughout Miami-Dade County. The project is funded by a grant from the US Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences. In ECHOS, children learn all about rain, birds, bees, plants, shells, blocks, water, air and magnets. And teachers learn effective ways to encourage scientific thinking in children, like wondering, observing, making predictions, doing experiments, and most importantly, asking questions! This ECHOS pre-service workshop focused on the idea of “productive questioning” and how to encourage scientific and creative thinking in young children. During the workshop, teachers experimented with some lessons and received new and updated lesson materials, which even included some “echoes” of their feedback from the previous year of implementation. Three more teacher training workshops are scheduled throughout the school year, in between lots of opportunities to use the science lessons and materials in the classroom.

Teachers explored simple science activities to learn how to engage children in science through productive questioning.

Teachers got picture cards with instructions to mingle and fit all cards into a big picture - just like each teacher is a part of the big ECHOS picture.

The Museum’s ECHOS program has a big goal: to test the effectiveness of a museum-developed early science readiness curriculum and related teacher professional development. By expanding science units to include math, language, and literacy, the research project will demonstrate the potential of ECHOS to improve teacher practice and student achievement at the preschool level.

A big program with big goals needs lots of materials. Get ready to do some math. There are 9 ECHOS units and 45 classrooms (involving 90 teachers and teacher assistants) throughout Miami. The Museum holds monthly workshops throughout the school year (1 per unit), and each of the 45 classrooms receives 1 bin of materials per unit. When preparing for these workshops, 150 boxes at a time get delivered to the Museum on 7 pallets. That is for 3 workshops. But we still need 2 more deliveries of that size to get all the materials for all 9 units. The final answer?

450 boxes + 21 pallets + lots of storage space + lots of time and effort = effective resources for teachers + young children learning science.

That’s a good answer.

In February and March, the fun and learning continued for teachers participating in the Museum’s ECHOS (Early Childhood Hands-On Science) program with two professional development workshops. Each one is for 45 classrooms (90 teachers and teacher assistants) around Miami. In the unit about measuring, teachers learn how to introduce children to the concept of one inch. So children use 1-inch blocks as tools to measure things around them. But how do you make it even more fun for young children? Put it to rhythm, and, move around! ECHOS staff and participating teachers modeled a sing-along activity designed to integrate science with language and literacy. You can sing it too (to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat).

The next workshop had ECHOS teachers learning how to teach young children to investigate scientific concepts like volume, density, and water displacement. Teacher assistants pretended to be the children and practiced all the activities, including one that integrated science and math. What’s the object of the game? Run with a cup of water, dump the water in a bucket, throw the cup into a bag, and run back to the start while your teammate does the same. When the buckets are full, we can see how many cups of water filled the bucket!

On January 24, 2012, Cheryl Lani Juárez, the Museum’s Sr. Director of Professional Development, was invited to speak with Univision’s highly popular national radio host Dr. Isabel Gómez-Bassols. The interview focused on the role science centers and museums play in engaging families in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) during out of school time learning.

Ms. Juarez talked about some of the Miami Science Museum’s educational programs as examples of how science museums can reach learners of all ages in their communities. For example, the Miami Science Museum developed ECHOS (Early Childhood Hands-On Science), a preschool science curriculum and professional development model that is currently being tested with Head Start teachers and children in classrooms throughout Miami-Dade County. The Museum also developed APEX (Afterschool Program Exploring Science) for K-5 students. Dr. Isabel was especially interested in the Museum’s Upward Bound Math and Science program, which has helped prepare over 500 low income, first-generation college bound students for postsecondary study in STEM fields.

Dr. Isabel’s  program is part of Univision’s national education campaign, entitled Es el Momento and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Univisión is committed to disseminating educational information through all their media platforms including television, radio and web, to raise general awareness of resources available to address the Latino education crisis in STEM fields.

A summary of the interview, titled “Más ciencia para una nación mejor” (More Science for a Better Nation) can be found on the Es el Momento section of Univisión’s website at http://vidayfamilia.univision.com/es-el-momento/doctora-isabel/article/2012-01-24/ciencia-educacion-futuro-nacion

Our Senior Vice President of Education, Dr. Judy Brown, recently had the honor of being invited to serve on the National Advisory Committee for Early Learning in Museums in Washington, DC. Dr. Brown currently leads the Museum’s research and development project Early Childhood Hands-On Science (ECHOS). A collaboration with the University of Miami’s College of Arts and Sciences, the project is funded by the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science. ECHOS is a pre-school science early intervention program for Head Start children, and a work force development program for Head Start teachers and teacher assistants.  ECHOS brings the Museum’s hands-on learning approach into preschool community centers across Miami-Dade County.  The project combines two of Judy’s passions and areas of expertise: informal museum education and early childhood learning. She traveled to Washington to join other leading museum educators and researchers on the advisory committee, in order to share our research as well as to help design an upcoming early childhood space in the American History Museum.  Judy will continue to advise the Smithsonian on the upcoming National Symposium on Early Learning in Museums. If you’ve ever wondered who gets to be a part of guiding the national conversation on early learning, we are doing pioneering work right here at our Museum.