Science as a special?
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Anonymous
| Just finished the grade at a WOTP DCPS. Social studies was every day with a SS/SEL teacher and science was a weekly special with a science teacher. I know they covered weather/climate, types of clouds, life cycles, genetics/punnet squares, and other topics. |
Anonymous
You are naive and will be upset that you do not have the ability to change DCPS. You want things to change, even though you haven't started your child in DCPS. The schools and curriculum have obviously worked for other people. You need to (a) make it work for you, or (b) move. Even Michelle Rhee moved. |
Anonymous
DCPS also builds science and social studies into the curriculum in a similar way. Starting in PK, they do units on topics like the water cycle or trees (science) or on jobs or activism (social studies). As they start reading, their reading selections are often focused on these units (reading a short passage about how clouds work, or one about who Rosa Parks was). Math can also incorporate these subjects, especially as they start learning geometry and fractions. However at schools with a lot schools below grade level, they have to focus more on fundamental concepts and don't have as much time to incorporate other concepts -- they spend more time on phonics and basic math because they are trying to get kids on track by 2nd or 3rd when being behind in reading or math can start to snowball. My kid has also complained that sometimes a ience concepts are repeated. For instance they did the life cycle of plants at the end of kindergarten but then reviewed it early in first. I get why that's boring but also think this is done to ensure all students are retaining this information, which serves as the basis for later science instruction. Starting in 3rd, many schools have a dedicated science and social studies teacher who works with the kids daily, just as there are dedicated ELA and math instructors (at our school and many DCPS schools, 3rd-5th grade rotate through these classrooms and has one of those teachers as a homeroom teacher, so it's a bit more like MS in that respect, while ensuring students are spending time on all four core subjects -- though again, students who are behind in reading and math fundamentals may get pullouts for acceleration because if you aren't reading fluently, the science and social studies instruction is not going to be effective). |
Anonymous
+1 and I get frustrated with the “it worked out fine for me so you’re wrong” stories because DCPS is constantly shifting and your experience of 5 years ago isn’t the same as the experience of today. |
Anonymous
+2. "It worked out for some people" is a pathetic standard. |
Anonymous
STEM is a separate special for younger grades and then science is a daily class, along with ELA and math, starting in first grade. They have a homeroom teacher (either the math, ELA, or science teacher) and then they go to the other two teachers every day. They also have performing arts, Spanish, library, and SEM as specials. To my understanding, they're planning to put an art studio in the new building so I imagine that will eventually be added. It's a Green Ribbon school so even though the campus is small environmental science is big. There's a garden and garden club for younger kids, they have Food Prints, and there's a seasonal farmer's market on Tuesdays as well. Food prints has a been a huge hit in our house. |
Anonymous
| There are a lot of ways DCPS curriculum could be improved but daily science for 1st graders is not one of them … |
Anonymous
It's a priority in most districts. Just because you're ok with it, doesn't mean all parents want their kids receiving subpar education. OP also stated their kid is in 4th grade, so.... |
Anonymous
I don’t think daily science instruction is standard at all in a majority of school districts at the elementary level. |
Anonymous
I don't remember having daily science in elementary school even in the "good old days." But my kids (now in college) had a lot of science in DCPS elementary, including lots of after school options, and in at lease 4th and 5th when they started rotating classes among teachers, there was always a science teacher and daily class. I also remember they did a lot of hands on science in kindergarten. Social studies was a part of the ELA block and used for literacy. |
Anonymous
I was coming on here to say the same thing .. I grew up going to school in a district some of the 'best' public schools, and looking back as a parent and educator our kids are learning a lot more from a much more robust curriculum now. Not sure if is just type A DC parents, or parents everywhere that have changed their expectations of elementary school so significantly. When my kids were young I remember several international families in our classrooms baffled at how little play and developmentally appropriate instruction happens in US schools. |
Anonymous
+1. there is a lot more opportunity for science instruction in elementary school than when I was a kid. Also tons of enrichment opportunity out of school in camps and classes. |
Anonymous
| What’s sad is that the middle schools are going waaaaay backwards with Amplify. |
Anonymous
Right. That is an entirely different topic. |
Anonymous
| As folks have noted, nearly all of the standard DCPS ELA units focus on a science or social studies subtopic (so 4th grade includes rocks/minerals and the American Revolution as two of the ELA units, for instance). Then, at our school, either science or social studies is the basis of the writing curriculum in 3rd-5th grades. So the kids rotate through Math, ELA and Writing/Social Studies (3rd & 5th) or Writing/Science (4th). We used to have a Science special but it was just an extra/hands on element on top of the standard DCPS curriculum (so a good thing in my book!); and we still have FoodPrints, which every class gets a 2-3 hour block of once/month and is science-focused. |