In addition to moving into a beautiful new facility, ISW’s teaching team spent the summer working on our science curriculum. Our Science Committee (which included ISW parent Dr. Page M. Jones, ISW grandparent Kay Hallett, ISW teachers Meghan Watterworth and Victoria Mercer, and Blandy program presenter Robin Coutts) reviewed science curriculum from across the country. We adopted the National Science Standards as our own, and looked at many, many options.

We wanted a program that fit ISW’s vision for education, a program that:

  • Uses guided inquiry, a middle road between entirely child-driven and entirely content-driven approaches.
  • Emphasizes writing skills and quantitative reasoning
  • Encourages students to pursue their individual interests (through, for example, science fair projects)
  • Uses the outdoors as our classroom as often as possible
  • Emphasizes the use of the correct language of science from the earliest classes
  • Prepares students for advanced study in high school and careers in science

We are thrilled with our choice: STC, Science Technology Concepts, a K12 program developed by the Smithsonian and the National Science Foundation. This program uses inquiry-based learning , and it promotes higher order thinking skills.  It exceeds all the national standards, and it is based in years of brain research and field testing. Best of all, the experiments are fun–an important compenent for a successful program! To read more about the program, click here:

http://www.nsrconline.org/curriculum_resources/index.html

We are equally pleased with our science teaching team! Meghan Watterworth will teach Lower Elementary Science. Victoria Mercer will teach Upper Elementary Science. And we have recently hired Rebecca Lloyd, a William and Mary graduate with years of hands-on science teaching experience both in the traditional classroom and in area gems like Blandy and Oak Hart Farms.