Ossining High School Students Lead Younger Children in Science Experiments

When the Roosevelt School fifth-graders walked into the ninth-grade class at Ossining High School in December, they became part of a fictional Star Wars scenario in which a starship with Jedi Knights that was dispatched to settle a conflict was heavily damaged in a blockade.

In the sequence of events imagined by science teacher Jonathan Dobelle, the children were able to repair the craft, but they would need to conduct an experiment to figure out how to correctly hook up fuel, water and turbine-balancing solutions to delivery pathways. Otherwise, they would cause a catastrophic chain of events that would render the starship useless.

At each lab station, there were three petri dishes filled with liquid, along with blue and red litmus papers and pH papers. The teams of students were tasked with determining which of the solutions was acidic, since that is what they would need to fuel the starship.

“It was fun,” fifth-grader Miles Bala said after his team dipped enough pieces of litmus paper in the liquids to find out which was acidic, which was basic and which one was water. “I like the storyline about how the ship crashed.”

The lab experiment was part of the district’s new Science Nation Project, which the Science, Engineering and Math Department at OHS developed.

“Our belief is that systematic, hands-on, authentic learning opportunities in the field of math, engineering and science will spark and sustain early childhood interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects,” said Alexandra Greenberg, director of science, engineering and mathematics for the school district.

“Facilitated by our award-winning content specialists, the experiences will foster natural learning curiosity of younger children, with hopes of positively affecting their educational journey,” she said.

The younger students are partnering with their high school peers for lessons in living environment, chemistry, earth science, forensics, engineering, 3D printing and Makey Makey circuits. In a recent chromatography lab, third-grade children from Claremont School went to teacher Christopher Straub’s class to learn about techniques used to separate and identify pigment in plant leaf cells.

In total, 14 elementary classes are scheduled to visit OHS this academic year. Before each visit, the high school and elementary school teachers collaborate to prepare the lesson.

Parent Luis Merchan, whose son Joseph is in fifth grade, said the initiative is a great opportunity for younger students to learn about the high school curriculum and get a peek at what it will be like. When Joseph was in elementary school, the teachers paired up two different grade levels with a similar goal of children learning from one another.

“This is the same thing. The big kids try to teach the little kids,” said Mr. Merchan, who was in the OHS class for the Star Wars lab.

In Mr. Dobelle’s classroom, the younger students learned that they had to test the liquids more than once to get accurate results and that they needed to confer with their lab partners to make sure they all agreed on the results.

Parent volunteer Severine Dunford said it was a great experience for all of the students. Her son, Felix Dunford, who is in fifth grade, enjoys and excels in science. “He likes to do any kind of experiment at home,” she said.

OHS freshman Ruby Rodgers said she was impressed with how smart the fifth-graders are. “I feel like they enjoyed the lab,” she said. “They made me understand it more.”

Ninth-grader Mary Nichols agreed that the experiment was a valuable experience for the older students, too. “I think it definitely helps us understand the material more because we had to explain it to other people,” she said.

(Photos are of the science lab in Jonathan Dobelle’s classroom and a recent visit to OHS by fourth-graders from Claremont School.)