The Study of Science           

Science is the study of the world around us, and through science courses at Scattergood, students learn to look with curiosity at the world, pose questions, and equip themselves with the basic understanding and skills to be able to continue to learn more about the world and themselves.  Our classes are designed to help students explore the world and make discoveries, and students are actively engaged in collaborative discovery.  Science is, at the heart, problem solving, about nurturing a desire to explore and ask questions, and then going about the process of finding answers.  Science is looking at familiar things in new ways, looking deeper into the world rather than taking it for granted.  It is seeing something as ordinary as a leaf as a new, rugged, glorious terrain of information that they can explore.  It is about asking “why” and allowing students the opportunity to test those theories and come to their own conclusions about why something works or is the way it is through individual and cooperative inquiry. 

Scattergood's Science Curriculum

Science classes meet for 100 minutes, three times a week for half of the year.  These longer class periods enable classes to have labs, projects, and field trips. This format allows students to explore topics in depth without the fragmentation often associated with short class periods.  Longer class periods also allow students time to make observations and participate in hands-on learning on the farm and prairie.

The first course in our science curriculum is Environmental Science, a class that focuses on studying the Earth and our impact on the environment.  It is an introduction to the concept of sustainability, which guides many aspects of our lives here at Scattergood.  Students are taught about the current state of the environment and responsible use of resources.  Native, local biomes are used as much as possible to give the students a sense of our place in the global environment. 

Sophomores take Biology at Scattergood, a class that is often held at our farm or prairie in accordance with our commitment to integrating the Scattergood farm and prairie into our academic curriculum.  Students have spent the night at the farm to watch lambs being birthed, have conducted a postmortem on a ewe that died as a result of eating hemlock, and tracked temperature changes in compost piles in varying degrees of decomposition. 

Juniors and seniors have the opportunity to take two of three upper-level science classes:  Physics, Chemistry, and Advanced Biology.  Students in these classes typically design experiments and write up formal lab reports as well as go on field trips and give presentations to their class and the community.

Scattergood Science Curriculum Goals 

We hope to help students explore current beliefs about the world, analyze the way in which those ideas developed historically, and become interested in taking part in the process of scientific inquiry.  Students look critically at their surroundings, make observations, hypothesize, design tests, collect and manipulate data, and make conclusions.  In every science course, students are expected to conduct independent experiments through and application of the scientific method.  Students present their findings in proper laboratory format and analysis as well as through oral presentations to their classes.

In the course of a Scattergood education, students engage in the study of science and appreciate its practical application to questions in everyday life.  They also become able to demonstrate scientific knowledge and skills through speech, writing, experimentation, and prediction.  Through their science classes, students are exposed to types of writing that they may not have otherwise encountered and learn to read, understand, and critique scientific literature.  In turn they learn to express themselves in different ways, with an expanded vocabulary.

As a result of a Scattergood education, the student in science will:

·   engage in the study of science and appreciate its practical application to questions in everyday life

·   collect, represent, and analyze data

·   demonstrate scientific knowledge and skills through speech, writing, experimentation, and prediction

·   use technology and mathematical concepts to enhance scientific knowledge

·   learn about the world and appreciate the earth in all its diversity

·   understand and employ the scientific method

·   practice and study scientific methods through lab experiments, writings, and readings

How We Teach Science in Order to Achieve These Goals 

A central tenet of our philosophy is the encouragement of curiosity.  Students need to become interested in looking at their environment in a different way and become more thoughtful rather than just blindly taking things for granted.  We hope to help students learn creativity of thought, and a major goal in our courses is to help them become equipped with the tools that will help them look meaningfully at the world around them, begin to wonder why and how things are, and begin to engage in a process of discovery about that world. 

The main focus of the science program is on the development of skills such as observation, experimentation, and scientific analysis.  We encourage students to look around them and wonder how the world around them works, and then work to acquire skills that allow them to become involved in a process of investigation to discover the “hows and whys” of the world.  In this way students become more active participants in the world, and they are able to become more self-confident that they can have this understanding and in this way become more connected with and knowledgeable about the world.  We therefore have labs in our classrooms that help students engage with the world around them, and we encourage discussion and questioning rather than relying on lecture.  The access to the pond, prairie, farm, and the Cedar River provide excellent resources for environmental field work and experiments. 

Science teachers at Scattergood use technology and mathematics to enhance the understanding of scientific concepts and foster interdisciplinary connections among academic and artistic subjects.  If students can see how different scientific knowledge interweaves with knowledge from other disciplines, they can understand how a microwave works or why their garden doesn’t grow.  Students learn to understand and employ the scientific method through lab experiments, writings, and readings and integrate math at the corresponding level.

Most importantly, perhaps, students learn about the world and appreciate the earth in all its diversity and wonder.  Students gain a sense of the amazing things that surround them, and we seek to help students gain the knowledge with which they can make good choices and gain a wider perspective on the world by seeing connections between science and social issues.  Students have an understanding that they are part of a greater whole, connected to interdependent living and nonliving systems of the planet.  In Scattergood science classes, students learn that it is important to care for the world around them and become responsible members of the world community.