What do you observe? What do you think? Just a couple of the questions asked during the workshop on June 11-14 at Campbell University’s College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences (CPHS) to provide middle school science teachers with new ideas to engage students.
The four-day workshop, funded by an $11,000 grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, was designed to help teachers use inquiry in their daily lessons versus only teaching facts to the students. Through this approach teachers engage their students with a question and guide them as they find the answer.
“Real life tangible experiences help students learn concepts better,” says Michael Adams, PharmD, PhD, director of Science Education Outreach at CPHS. “The more this type of learning is adapted into the classroom, the more students are going to grasp the information.”
Seventeen 6th-8th grade science teachers from across the state of North Carolina attended the event in Buies Creek. Faculty and staff from CPHS and the School of Education led participants through numerous inquiry based labs and techniques for teachers to take back to their classrooms. Participants also learned how to convert their labs and lesson plans to an inquiry based teaching method.
The workshop was offered through the College’s Science Education Outreach program which works to improve teaching methods for middle and high school teachers. Another effort of the program exposes middle and high school students to various careers in science.
Photo copy: Joe Raber, science and math teacher at Harnett Central Middle School in Angier, N.C., and Joyce Hatch, science teacher at A.L. Stanback Middle School in Hillsborough, N.C., separate food dyes during an inquiry based lab using chromatography.