When Professor Gigglesnort started talking last week, the children in Barbara Martinez’s first-grade class fell silent as they listened to the sock-puppet’s explanation of the mass of several objects.
The wise little professor with a high-pitched voice is one of the tools Tracy Reynolds Maxwell has used to teach science to the younger students at San Lorenzo Valley Elementary School this semester.
“We cram so much into these kids (because of standardized testing),” Maxwell said. “If they can just have time to have fun with this stuff, instead of trying to cram, they learn to enjoy it.”
Maxwell was hired by the school to teach science to kindergartners through third-graders at a school where students had not been exposed to science until fourth and fifth grade. Her class is enrichment for the students once each week, and she is not required to teach to certain standards.
“I can just explore, where a lot of teachers can’t,” she said.
Maxwell’s position is funded by part of anonymous donation of $20,000 to San Lorenzo Valley Elementary School earmarked to teach music in the first half of the year (taught by Beth Hollenbeck) and science in the second half.
The science classes have boys and girls learning about heat created by motion, the transfer of energy between objects and how energy can change forms — like using sunlight to heat a black plastic bag to make a “solar balloon.”
Plus, Maxwell gets to teach in the new science classroom at the elementary school.
“The students are so excited to come into the new classrooms,” Principal Michelle McKinny said.
Maxwell, a credentialed science teacher who has worked to create the elementary school Gifted And Talented Education program, “Exploring our Marvelous Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary,” likes to create “aha” moments for youngsters. Her curriculum is based on National Science Content Standards.
She also incorporates the measuring of solar energy from the solar panels on top of the new science building.
The music and science enrichment were conceived to be for only one year, while the anonymous donation lasts, but Maxwell, for one, hopes they will continue.
The school district unexpectedly qualified for more than $1 million in state funding this month and will make decisions about what programs to pay for next year as it works out its budget.
