New Haven Independent

Oswald Schmitz, a professor of ecology at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, was quizzing Columbus Family Academy fifth-graders Jonathan Matos, Orileys Vasquez, and Jada Ward about their solar oven experiment.

So, what’s the advantage?

“If the electricity goes out, you can use ours”

“But what if it’s a cloudy day?”

“Uh, maybe you have to wait for another day?”

“Any other advantages? For example, does smoke come out of your oven?”

Schmitz believes that creative application to everyday life should be more emphasized as a criterion for judging citywide science fair projects.

He mused on this matter Thursday as he and a dozen other judges interviewed some 83 students and reviewed their 29 projects festively arrayed in the basement of the school at Grand and Perkins. Some 13, it is hoped, will make it into the citywide science fair a month from now.

“I basically feel,” said Schmitz, who has two kids at Wilbur Cross and one at the Edgewood School, “that all these kids have neat ideas. They need to work on the design of the experiments and on scientific thinking.”

He went on to check out Daniela Gonzales’s Agua de Conetes or Water Rockets. (All the fifth- and sixth- grade projects at Columbus, a dual language school, are in Spanish and English.) “I think that what the NHPS should be doing is elevating science, as a method of thinking, to the level of attention they give to reading and to math,” he said. “I know that No Child Left Behind makes this difficult, but it should be the goal.”

According to Abie Benitez, Columbus’s proud principal (pictured with Schmitz), all grades receive 40 to 60 minutes of science twice a week, with the upper grades receiving sometimes three periods. This is augmented by parents and science mentors who work regularly with the kids on their projects; all the school’s 300 kids are involved in the fair.

She agreed with Schmitz on the need for the elevation of science in the system, but suggested that developmentally fifth and sixth graders know more than they’re able or willing to articulate. “They’re often shy,” she said, directing a reporter to two aeronautical experimenters, “and have really learned about the scientific method. Only we need more time with them for it to be reflected in the experiments.”

So instead of waiting for the Connecticut Mastery Tests to be over before mounting the school fair, which is a run-up to the citywide fair, she plans to begin in the winter next year.

That would please Isael Perez no end. His project, Force or Fuerza, was being judged by Yale’s new science coordinator, Joanna Price, who has begun working on expanding science outreach to the community.

She listened as Isael explained how he was trying to figure out how many grams of weight would be required to raise a brick resting at one end of a fulcrum. His data table showed that in four trials, the weight varied from 500 down to 200 grams. Why was that?

Probably because he moved the fulcrum, he said. Price said Isael asked some good physics questions. However, the design of his experiment needed some refining as he seemed also to be changing the thicknesses of the fulcrum, thereby not fully accounting for and confusing his dependent and independent variables.

It was all about learning, and she and Schmitz were pleased with the high curiosity of the students.

Schmitz said that developmental issues aside, this was the age to seize on that curiosity. “I’d like to see Richard Therrien [the K-12 science coordinator] bring more real life issues or problems to the science curriculum and the fair, and have the kids work on solving those problems, so they see how connected science is to life.”

He would have been pleased by where Isael Perez got his idea from: “I see all these cars in my neighborhood being towed,” the engaging sixth grader said, “and I wanted to know how much power the tow trucks would need to lift them.”

He also said he learned how to pronounce hipotesis in English — hypothesis.

The citywide science fair, which is expected to feature 250 projects from over 900 students K-12, is set for May 13, 14, and 15 at Yale.

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