ARIES Teacher Workshops At Discovery
ARIES Teacher Workshops At Discovery
BIRDGEPORT â The Discovery Museum will offer two teacher workshops in November and December to introduce a newly developed program for sparking student interest in the latest scientific concepts.
Working in collaboration with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the museum will introduce elementary school teachers to Project ARIES (Astronomy Resources for Intercurricular Elementary Science).
Comprised of eight self-contained modules, ARIES is an astronomy-based physical science curriculum for children in grades three through six in which students use innovative, simple, and affordable apparatus to carry out a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities.
Project ARIES is being developed with grants from the National Science Foundation, with support from Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. When completed, the eight modules will cover time, light and color, energy and the sun, astronomy, forces and motion, navigation, and waves.
The modules involve students in discovery-based science, challenging them to predict, observe and support conclusions about basic principles.
On Tuesday, November 16, from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm, teachers are invited to the museum at 4450 Park Avenue to preview several modules and try some of the activities for themselves. For example, in âExploring Time,â students investigate the concepts of time and timekeeping from historical and cultural perspectives. They also relate time to the seasons, and they build their own timekeeping devices.
The second teacher session will be held at the museum on Saturday, December 4, from 10 am to 4 pm. Participants will carry out the âExploring Light and Colorâ module, preparing to lead their students in a discovery of how water, lenses, filters, and prisms affect light.
Each teacher session costs $135. Reservations for the November workshop must be made through Charlesbridge Publishing at 617/926-0329. The December workshop can be reserved by calling the Discovery Museum at 203/372-3521 extension 124.