The skills and background of participating students will vary enormously. Being familiar with a few general characteristics of young learners may help you gauge expectations.

What is the Life of a Middle School and High School Student Like?

The skills and background of participating students will vary enormously. Being familiar with a few general characteristics of young learners may help you gauge expectations.

Middle school students are making many transitions in their personal, social, and school lives. Most will have moved from a small, self-contained elementary school where science may not be taught as a separate subject. They are learning the basics of experiments. By grade 7, students should be familiar with a “fair test” (in which everything is kept constant except one variable).

High school students are moving toward more independent projects and individual intellectual expression. They are more likely to test limits, but like middle school students, they value their peers.

Students find PlantingScience Motivating

Talking and Sharing Their Work with Scientists

As one PlantingScience teacher put it, “the scientists have celebrity status to the students.” Students will often check the website multiple times a day to see if they have a new message from their mentor scientist.

One teacher reported that her students were shocked when their scientist mentor told them she owned a dog. Other students couldn’t believe their scientist mentor shared their interest in sports. The personal connection that a scientist makes by sharing something about their interests and how they spend their days can change student perceptions.

Growing Plants

Students can get very personally invested in the success of their plants, tying whether the plant survives to their grade or to the success of the experiment. It is not unusual for the students to name each experimental plant and to take the plants home with them to nurture after the experiment is complete.

Designing their Own Projects

Although they may struggle with time management, logistics, and knowing the basic parameters for plant life, the responsibility of decision-making that comes with seeing a project through from planning to execution gives students pride and ownership of the project.

What is the Current Climate for Inquiry in the Classroom?

There is a wave of support for teaching science as a practice, and including inquiry at multiple levels throughout science education. The Next Generation Science Standards support tying core concepts together and building student experience from one level to the next. They emphasize tying knowledge together with skills and broad concepts. The AP Biology revisions support depth not breadth in biology coverage and emphasis on inquiry, quantitative reasoning, and science practices. The recent report Education for Life and Work also emphasized deeper learning and 21st century communication collaboration skills.

Bringing Inquiry to the Classroom is Not an Easy Job

Potential Limitations your Team’s Teacher may Face

• Science training and experience vary among teachers. Middle school teachers are often not trained to teach science. The last science class for some high school teachers may have been a 100-level college class. Teachers run the gamut from having very little science experience to having a research-based advanced degree.
• Limited materials and space are available in the typical classroom. Often a teacher will have 90 or more students to keep track of in their science classes during a session.
• Computer access can sometimes be an unexpected challenge with computer carts double-booked or school schedule changes. Not all students have access to computers at home.
• Fitting PlantingScience into the curriculum is especially challenging when teachers are pressured to cover many topics and/or to stay in synch with other teachers at the school. Although it would be nice for teams to spend more time in certain stages of their project development, sometimes this isn’t possible. Teachers may choose to target a certain phase of the inquiry cycle with mentor assistance online and do other phases offline. We encourage teachers to be explicit about this so you’ll know what to expect.
• Letting go of teacher-directed learning is scary. For teachers who are just starting to bring in inquiry and student-led learning, it takes time to “embrace the chaos” as one PlantingScience teacher put it. It takes a lot of skill in reading the students to know when an unstructured project is succeeding and when it is not.