June 12, 2007
UNL Project Helps McPhee Students Learn About Environmental Science
LINCOLN, Neb. — Many of the children who attend Lincoln's McPhee Elementary School live in places where they can't run barefoot through the grass in their yards and pick flowers from their gardens.
That's because very few of them have yards and gardens.
The children who attend McPhee, 820 Goodhue Blvd. near downtown, do not live in homes where yards or parks are easily accessible, said Principal Bess Scott. As a result, the children lack environmental, scientific experiences in their play and learning time, she said.
Once two graduate students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's School of Natural Resources learned about the situation at McPhee, they stepped in to help bring change.
Kimberly Payne, a master's student in soil science studies from Benton, Ark., and Marcy Pummill, a master's student in wildlife ecology from St. Louis and an assistant with Project WET and Project Learning Tree, have been helping McPhee students learn about environmental science for about the past year and a half.
Payne and Pummill, who will graduate in August, wrapped up their work as Lincoln Public Schools ended classes for the academic year.
"The main goal was to show kids that science is fun and you don't have to be a genius to do science," Payne said. "All you have to do is wonder about it."
Payne and Pummill began their work in the 2005-06 academic year by starting a science club at McPhee and helping them conduct science projects. They also worked with children of all ages, from the preschool Head Start program through fifth grade, teaching them about such things as water, soil, climate and ecology.
McPhee students even learned the seven steps to scientific method: ask a question; form a hypothesis; gather materials and decide on a method; conduct an experiment; record the results; draw a conclusion; and site sources.
"It's amazing. They learned the scientific method really well," Payne said. "We would ask them, 'what's the first step of the scientific method' and they would all shout 'ask a question!'"
Scott said the graduate students began work at McPhee as the school was in the midst of a Greenspace project to transform its inner city, concrete and pebble playground into an outdoor education classroom.
Students at McPhee typically live in low-income apartments and 85 percent of them qualify for free and reduced lunches. Fifty-five percent are students of color. Many of them don't know what it's like to play outside in a yard or grow plants in a garden, she said.
"They have to walk across Ninth and 10th Street to get to green space," Scott said.
The hands-on lessons led by the UNL students taught the children more about the concepts of nature, Scott said.
Jim Brandle, professor in the School of Natural Resources in UNL's College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, said the project first arose after the SNR's Graduate Student Association decided to get involved in a community service project.
Brandle, whose wife Carolyn works at McPhee, suggested to Payne and Pummill that they do a project at the school. They enlisted the help of other SNR graduate students, and during the past semester, 15 to 20 graduate students were involved in the project.
"A lot of them didn't realize many of the issues these kids were facing," Brandle said "We were calling on our students to use their expertise and share their excitement on these subjects with the kids."
"The kids had a great time and they were very enthusiastic," Payne said. "It was fun to just see their eyes light up and their curiosity peak. I'm not sure who got more out of it, them or me."
Some of the children even said they wanted to be scientists when they grew up, Pummill said.
"It was very exciting to see we might end up being the spark for some child to become involved in science," Pummill said.
Scott said she noticed a marked improvement in student vocabulary, as students learned scientific words like "hypothesis." Vocabulary is especially important because in lower income schools like McPhee, research indicates children enter school knowing 300 to 500 words compared to 10 times that in higher income schools, Scott said.
"The relationship between School of Natural Resources students and McPhee Elementary connects young, urban, diverse students to the wonders and challenges of the environment and environmental science," Scott said. "I can only imagine what positive long-term results will occur."
The School of Natural Resources is part of the university's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
6/12/07-LM/DM
Jim Brandle - Ph.D.
School of Natural Resource Sciences
Professor
(402)472-6626
Dan Moser IANR News & Photography Coordinator (402) 472-3007
Department: School of Natural Resources
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