Title:
Scientists, Engineers Help Elementary School
Teachers
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
A program in the United States brings scientists and
engineers into elementary schools to teach teachers
more about how to teach science. Dave Weiss is a
retired engineer. One day each week he volunteers at
Georgian Forest Elementary School in Silver Spring,
Maryland, near Washington. He works with teacher
Fred Tenyke on science projects for ten-year-olds.
He says, "Fred is so enthusiastic and he's so much
fun with the kids. I can see that he really loves
what he's doing. I get as much pleasure from helping
the teachers as I do helping the students."Student
Jada Lockwood she says enjoys Mr. Weiss' visits to
her classroom. She likes the drawings he uses to
explain scientific ideas. The American Association
for the Advancement of Science sponsors the Senior
Scientists and Engineers program. Dave Weiss has
been a volunteer in that program for many years. The
scientists and engineers help teachers in elementary
schools improve their skills. Mr. Weiss says he and
the other volunteers help teachers by providing
hands-on expertise. He notes that science is an area
in which many elementary school teachers have
limited experience. "In elementary school, for the
most part, your regular classroom teacher is
responsible for teaching science, along with reading
and math, and if they don't have a strong science
background, just by nature, they're going to tend to
underrepresent science in the curriculum."Fred
Tenyke agrees. He just started teaching science
classes a few months ago. He says: "A lot of time
I'll spit out information I learned in the book, or
things that are part of the curriculum. Dave helps
me learn how to supplement that information so that
it's more relevant to them, so that it will be more
relevant to their work experience later on in
life."Fifteen-year-olds in the United States scored
about average in science among countries that took
part in testing by the OECD in two thousand nine.
The OECD is the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. But Dave Weiss says he
is hopeful for the future. He says he tries to give
elementary school students a solid foundation. His
hope is that "they'll develop a curiosity about
what's going on around them."For VOA Special
English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. We have more programs
at voaspecialenglish.com, where people can read,
listen and learn English with texts, MP3s and
activities. We also offer English lessons at the VOA
Learning English page on Facebook.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
