Project: Science Literacy Is No Reason to Panic!
Resources Needed: A class set of books of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a classroom reading timer and bookmarks that also help with graphing science data.
School Poverty Level: High
Location: Lafayette High School, Lexington, Kentucky
Total Cost: $394.54
Still Needed: $123.07 Completed!
Expires: Jan 05, 2015
Teacher's Comments from Ms. Regnier:
My Students: "A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." And a love of reading and learning is the most massively useful thing a student of the universe can have - that and a propensity to open a high school science textbook and remember the words, "Don't Panic!"
My 9th and 10 grade students are cantankerous but cute, sweet and a little salty. Without the right learning, I worry they will become like Marvin the Paranoid Android who is one of the characters in the Hitchhiker's Guide. Marvin suffers with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a "brain the size of a planet" which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use.
My students come from hard working families who are part of a long tradition of learning. Many of their parents and grandparents attended this same school decades ago, but times have changed for this next generation. The easier and better we try to make things in the modern world, they more complicated they have become. My students are up for the challenges. They just need a chance to use their glorious brains.
My Project: I want to share a love of science literacy with my students by giving them the whole universe -- or rather, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe." We will use this book as supplemental material to our normal classroom learning goals and Next-Gen science standards in order to promote literacy in science. Science vocabulary words are about as dry as the lunar landscape, but throw in a few colorful characters and a paradoxical time-shifting plot-line with a cargo bay of sarcasm, and suddenly words like infinite improbability, Brownian motion, entropy, light-year, empirical, anachronism, and vestige, don't make you want to throw a towel over your face.
Not everything they read in science class has to be dull definition-driven specs and systems. Why can't it be curious and fun too?
Arthur C. Clarke said author Douglas Adams' use of "don't panic" was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity. I want give this same advice to my students every day, along with skills they can use to solve real problems, a desire to curiously question their universe, and comedic appreciation for the Vogon-like systems in which they are entwined.
COMPLETED
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