Harnessing the potential of students’ wonder and awe

Live insects, bubbles, electricity, slime, and rockets. That’s what students six through eight grades at the Lincoln Orens Middle School in Island Park enjoyed learning and tinkering with as part of Big Science Day, an in-school program facilitated by the New York Hall of Science.

The event is one part of the district’s three-year strategic plan to promote wonder and awe in students toward science, technology, engineering, arts and math. 

This was the first Big Science Day for Island Park schools and the first New York Hall of Science school outing since the pandemic’s onset. The New York Hall of Science is an interactive science museum in Queens that features over 450 hands-on exhibits along with community outreach programs. The school district used to host National Circus Week funded by the Parent Teacher Association, but reallocated the funding towards more applicable skills like critical thinking, teamwork and problem solving.

“Those types of skills are not really something transferable,” Superintendent of Schools Vincent Randazzo said. “What we’re doing here is we’re getting them excited about science and engineering, which is preparing them for jobs in the future. So, the PTA, who sponsored National Circus Week, approached me last spring and said, ‘You know, we’d like to do something a little different.’”

Assistant Superintendent Alison Offerman-Celentano was the science director while working in the Commack school district, so making Science Day happen was a passion project of hers.

“We’re hoping that the students become inspired that they find a passion and a love for any of the STEAM fields, whether it’s science, technology, engineering, arts or mathematics, and they carry that forward into high school when they have more choice in the course offerings that they’re able to take, as they advanced,” she said.

“And then hopefully, these skills and this inquiry-based approach to learning will carry them forward into jobs that we don’t even know exist now, but will be based on collaboration, creativity, communication, and all the 21st century skill that they’re gaining right now for experiences such as this.”

The students enjoyed stepping out of the classroom and into the gymnasium to make bubble art, learn about insect stages of life, create slime and bubbles, learn about electricity and structural support, and test out simple rockets.

Principal Bruce Hoffman said the hands-on experience is one of the best ways to have students learn, compared to the focus on memorization among prior generations of students. “Working together trying to problem solve, critical thinking skills are being used. So, it’s really a lot of cooperative learning happening,” he said.

“They’re learning about the fundamental parts of a rocket like the nose, the body, the tail; they’re going to be able to choose the launch angle and how that affects the trajectory of the rocket,” said Sebastian Muzeja, Hall of Science programs assistant, in charge of the rocket station. “It’s all about hypothesis and experimentation, so you have to kind of go for it and not be afraid of failing or changing a variable to see what happens to the outcome.”

Sixth-grader Kieran Callanan was among the students who tried repeatedly to perfect their rocket launch, attempting to accomplish the farthest distance reachable. “When I go to 45 (degrees) it goes way past the pink (marker),” he said, “But when I go a little under 45, it doesn’t go that far. I guess when I go at a certain angle it’s going to fly a lot farther.”

Callanan said he developed a new appreciation for science after getting hands-on experience. “It’s getting me into it a lot more, definitely,” he said. 

Lily Stein, another sixth grader, learned about electricity during one of her experiments. “It’s fun,” she said of holding the metal ball that would make her hair stand up. “My hair just keeps going up. I wasn’t expecting it to go that high.” She also made two slimes and some bubble art. “It was really fun and so I like how they brought this to us,” she said.

Science teacher Karen Davis said the day was all about promoting wonder, following the next-generation science standards.

“We instill wonder,” she said. “The motto is ‘don’t kill the wonder.’”