Making math and science a favorite subject
By Staff
Johnny Mack Morrow
Franklin County Times
The beginning of school is just around the corner.
Parents and students are gearing up for the start of classes and getting the last bit of fun out of their summer vacation.
Yet many of our teachers have already been hard at work for the next school year.
They have been attending training for the Alabama Reading Initiative and the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative.
Most of us are familiar with the Alabama Reading Initiative, our homegrown effort that has become a teaching model for the entire nation.
The program has expanded to every school and has improved student reading and writing. Last year, Alabama had the largest jump in fourth grade reading scores in the nation, and one of the best single year improvements ever measured.
Because of the program, our kids have better comprehension of language skills necessary for future success.
The Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative, commonly referred to as AMSTI, is based on the success of the reading program. While it hasn't been around as long, it is starting to see similar gains in student achievement where it has been implemented.
AMSTI has rethought how to teach what many students consider boring or difficult subjects.
The basic idea is to make the subjects more hands-on and engaging for students. Also, while it may not have been the intention of the program designers, students say that it has also made math and science fun.
The program provides teachers with all of the equipment, supplies, and resources needed to teach.
Examples of equipment include labware, chemicals, global positioning devices, plants with growth containers, and many other items. The resources arrive packaged in "kits" ready for immediate use and customized for the subjects that will be taught.
A good science class goes through a lot of materials.
Science teachers will tell you they have to constantly go to the store to get items for their classroom because experiments eat up supplies. With this program, once students complete the activities from a kit, it is returned to an AMSTI location where it is renewed and sent back to the school for next year.
An effective classroom has more than just textbooks, and AMSTI makes sure that our science classrooms have what they need.
With AMSTI, students work in teams and hypothesize about the affects of their experiments.
The students then do the experiments and record data, just like a scientist would, and they plot the data and write up the results.
Then they compare it to their original hypothesis and present their findings to the rest of the class.
While they are doing this, students are graphing, writing, and learning about organisms and biology in a way they couldn't have by just reading a textbook. It brings science to life while making it hands on.
One of the primary reasons these lessons are so effective is that the teachers do the experiments themselves during the summer workshops.
They learn the best way to use the materials from master teachers who have effectively used them in their own classroom.
Because of the slow economy, school budgets will be smaller by almost three percent for the next school year.
Even in such a tough budget year, we were able to expand AMSTI by more than 200 schools and made sure the Reading Initiative was fully funded and in every school.
We hope to have every Alabama school in AMSTI by the 2010 school year- it is just that important.
So don't be surprised if your children or grandchildren tell you that science and math are now their favorite subjects.
That's exactly what we want to happen, and teachers this summer have been working hard to make sure that it does.
Johnny Mack Morrow is a state representative for Franklin County. His column appears each Wednesday.
