Chemistry Department outreach Program

A standard program consists of a one hour presentation by a minimum of two college students followed by a question and answer session. No special facilities are required; all supplies are provided by the University of Minnesota and there is no cost for the program. If needed, the length of the program can be adjusted for shorter or longer class periods. As the Outreach program is sustained by the semester-to-semester recruitment of volunteers, we attempt to schedule no more than 2 events a week. We regret our inevitable turning away of requests, but it is occasionally necessary. The Chemistry Outreach Program will visit approximately 50 schools in a year.
If you would like to request a visit, please email leopo001@umn.edu and tell us:

• who you are (name & organization you represent)
• where you wish us to visit (full address)
• how long you would like the presentation to last
• the demographics of the audience (number of people, age, science background)
• the best way to contact you (phone number, E-mail address)

If you are unable to send E-mail, you are welcome to request an Outreach visit by contacting us at:

Chemistry Outreach Program
University of Minnesota--Twin Cities
Department of Chemistry
207 Pleasant Street SE, 135 Smith Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55455
(612) 624-8008

Information for University of Minnesota Volunteers

Advice:
If you are a new Outreach volunteer, you will be matched up with someone who has done them before. There is a certain comfort in doing a couple visits with an experienced demonstrator until you also feel comfortable with the experiments and interacting with various audiences. The experienced volunteer is a resource for you. Ask them any questions or mine them for stories about their experiences. They'll usually have several amusing tales to tell.
The most important thing about doing an Outreach visit is to have fun. If it isn't fun, you won't want to do it again. While this may sound obvious, it is also worth noting that your audience will often feed off your emotions and enthusiasm. Your having a good time isn't just a selfish issue; the enjoyment of the presentation for everyone rides upon it for everyone.

Remember that every outreach volunteer will have a different presentation style. Don't feel inadequate. You probably know much more than your audience about Chemistry (that's why you are there) and your first focus should be to relax. The demos we run are very safe and reliable. While there is certainly some guaranteed entertainment value in the experiments, the most important part of the event rides on your ability to explain the mechanics of the experiments in terms the audience can appreciate. This isn't a magic show and it isn't a monotonous lecture. It is fun science. Your best friend is a solid knowledge of the experiments from the Experiment Packet and your own reflections on how these things apply to "everyday life."

Here are a few pitfalls some people fall into in doing Outreach events. Don't feel compelled to fill the entire time in the presentation time with your voice. Silence here and there is okay. It lets your audience occasionally relax, digest what has happened so far, and takes some pressure off you from controlling the audience the whole time. Don't just talk at your audience. Get them involved where possible. Get volunteers to be the extra set of hands a few of the experiments require. Try to get your audience to think about the experiments in terms of what they observed and what they hypothesize the explanations/mechanisms for their observations are. Ask for practical applications of what they saw. The more your audience participates the more they will enjoy your visit. Again, this keeps pressure off of you being the 'monotonous voice' in the front of the room and it lets them wrap their minds around what you are doing and what it means.

General Guidelines for Teachers and Instructors

1. When you invite a visiting scientist to your classroom, be as specific as possible about what you need. "Tell us all about chemistry" is not as helpful as "help us study water." Consider the size of your group: a lab experience is unlikely to be practical for more than about 15 students. Be sensible in what you request.
2. Integrate chemistry lessons with other areas of the curriculum. There is a lot of chemical information that the students can absorb while studying history, geography, health, and language. Take the time to develop a few special class projects that take advantage of this relatively cheap way to study chemistry.
3. Don't worry about not having all the answers for the students questions about a chemistry topic. Understand the particular lesson involved (this is very important) but for questions about related areas, help the students find out the answers for all of you. It might be helpful to develop a bibliography of useful and readily available sources of information (both for yourself and for your students).
4. Emphasize the positive impact of chemical research and industry on your students' lives, not just the dangers. We risk turning off our students to the value of the sciences in our lives because we focus too much on the problems generated by our use of resources. All of the matter in the biosphere is, of course, "chemical," including the students' bodies, food, etc. It is an important goal that all people understand and respect natural phenomena since all people are directly affected by chemical processes.
5. Try to involve parent volunteers in your outside activities. Especially when trying hands-on activities, you can't be everywhere at once nor can you answer the same question thirty times.
6. Be sure you understand any safety precautions required for chemicals used in the experiments and model the correct safety procedure. It's too late to look things up after someone has spilled a solution. Since you would require your students to wear safety goggles to do an experiment, wear them yourself when doing a demonstration.

Tips for Science Outreach Ambassadors

Introduction
It is not unusual to hear children say they want to be doctors, astronauts, or teachers when they grow up. It is easy for children to see adults they admire doing these jobs in books, on television, and in real life. But where are our aspiring chemists? The chemist portrayed on television often bears dose resemblance to Mr. Hyde: an unrealistic and unfortunate role model. Children delight in learning and using words like "stegosaurus" and "pterodactyl." Wouldn't it be wonderful to hear words like chromatography and density used with the same excitement? You could be introducing elementary school students to these words for the first time. And imagine a ten-year-old child coming home from school and announcing, "When I grow up, I want to be a chemist!" You can be the one responsible for such enthusiasm.
By taking the time to visit and interact with an elementary or middle school classroom as a guest scientist, you can become the chemist who makes the difference.

You are probably aware that many non-chemists, including the pre high school teacher, find science in general (and chemistry in particular), mysterious and threatening. When given a chance, both teachers and students can enjoy transforming the classroom into a laboratory and exploring like real scientists. Consider being the catalyst that allows this to happen. The following guidelines are prepared to help make your visit rewarding for both you and the students who are waiting to explore the wonderful world of chemistry. We applaud your interest and wish you the best in this endeavor.

"So, you are going to be a guest scientist in an elementary or middle school classroom. Now what do you do?"

Consider the Goal of Your Visit
Find out from the teacher why you were asked to visit. Are you to:

• Serve as a role model for the students?
• Present a lesson on a specific topic?
• Offer career information? Remember, you may be the only chemist many of these students (and teachers) will ever meet.

Elementary teachers are typically "science-shy." In order to serve as a suitable role model, to teach a lesson well, or to encourage students to pursue your career, you must empower the kids and teachers to feel a part of science; leave them aching to be amateur scientists. Unfortunately, all too many young students are "turned off" to science even as early as fourth grade. Your primary responsibility in the classroom should be to "do science no harm." If you leave the message that science is elite, boring, hard, unintelligible, or magic you will do harm.

Chemistry can be loud and colorful, but it is fun even when it is subtle, challenging, and thought-provoking. Pouring air under water can be as exciting to a first-grader as cylinders of liquids mysteriously bubbling and changing colors.

Be an Open-Minded Scientist, NOT a Magician...
Unlike magicians, scientists attempt to find answers to what they do. Challenge the students to join in on the fun of finding these answers. Encourage them to think about why and how things happen. At the introductory level, it is far more important to provide non- threatening opportunities for the students to postulate "why?" than it is for their responses to be absolutely correct. If the accepted explanation is too complex to discuss, maybe the emphasis of the presentation is wrong. Reinforcing for students that a color change can be an indication of a chemical reaction may be more useful than a detailed explanation of the reaction mechanisms involved.
It is equally important to let the students know that not all the answers are known and that they too can make a difference. Teachers should be made to feel that saying "I don t know. What do you think?" or "Let's find out together," are acceptable responses.

It is also important to point out that not everyone's results will be the same. Reinforce the idea that a student's results are not wrong just because they are different from a classmates results.

While using the term "chemistry," try relating the topics to real-life experiences. Science at the elementary school level is much less fragmented than it is for most chemists. Integrating topics into other non-science areas is also very useful. After all, chemistry is all around us, not just in the chemistry lab.

Take care to involve all students. It is very worthwhile to spend time talking informally with small groups or individual students before, during, or after your presentation. It is important to leave the message that chemistry is for all who are willing to apply themselves to the questions before them. Chemistry is neither sexist, racist, nor frightening.

Do Some Advance Planning
What is pedagogically sound for college students, high school students, or even for yourself, may not be cognitively or behaviorally appropriate for pre high school students. The expert on what is appropriate for children is the elementary or middle school classroom teacher. Pre high school teachers may not be experts in chemistry, but they are experts on teaching children—so talk with the teacher as you plan your presentation.
As you and the teacher make your plans, you'll want to find out about:

1. The grade and ability level of the students (gear your presentation specifically to their level). Remember that younger students may not have the fine-motor skills needed to fiddle with a number of test tubes or to assemble a complex apparatus. Students also vary greatly in their ability to interpret and follow a series of instructions.
2. The previous science experiences the students have done, especially those relating to your area, and what follow-up experiences the teacher is planning to engage the students in after your visit.
3. The number of students with whom you will be interacting and what the room arrangement and facility is like. Remember many elementary classrooms are without running water and electrical outlets can be few. Also remember to find out if the room is carpeted, if fire extinguishers are present, if goggles are available, and if the room is properly ventilated for the activity you are planning.
4. The materials and supplies that are already available for student use, the types of equipment they are used to manipulating, and what sort of special equipment or supplies you should bring.
5. The type of presentation that would be most suitable: small group demonstration, large group demonstration, hands-on/minds-on investigation, discussion groups, lecture role-playing or simulation game, interactive computer program, school assembly program. Don't forget the size and amount of the material shared will need to be appropriate for the size of the class as well as the facility. Will you be positioned and have enough material so that everyone will be able to see and follow your actions?
6. The length of presentation that is suitable for these particular students.

Take Them from Where They Are and Make Them Want to Learn
Students learn by constructing new meaning from their past and present experiences. What they already know affects how they interpret any new events. Meaningful science instruction is presented as a series of concrete and relevant experiences that help to refine knowledge over time. Therefore, your presentation may be more effective if you keep the following ideas in mind:

1. In doing experiments, hands-on activities, or demonstrations, the instructor should not tell the students what to expect, but should instead allow the children to express their own explanations of the observed events. The children, as learners, can then be challenged to see if their explanations fit with other new experiences or if they need to be changed.
2. If you elect to discuss a little theory with students, be sure to emphasize the scientific explanations, e.g., that gas molecules "move farther apart" rather than "become larger"; a chemical change is a rearrangement of atoms.
3. Teachers can guide students toward the acceptable explanations and help them modify their misconceptions and naive theories of the world. This approach has important ramifications for you as you give your presentation to a pre high school science class. For example, young students can neither observe nor explain atoms and molecules. They can, however, observe a solid dissolve in a liquid and explain that it "disappeared but you can still see its color or taste its presence." At this point, the students can be challenged to explain how one cannot see the solid any more but can detect its presence in the liquid. The child can be led to a deeper understanding of chemical particles in this manner.

It is a good idea to take some instant photographs of students wearing goggles, performing a hands-on activity, or observing your demonstration. Be sure to include the teacher and any adult helpers in the photos and ask another adult to include you in some photos. Teachers will be able to use these photos to publicize your visit and to sustain student enthusiasm generated by your visit, e.g., by designing displays for the classroom or for parents night.

Become a Resource for the Teacher
If time and circumstances allow, offer to be a resource person for the teacher. Leaving your name for any future questions can be very useful to the teacher. If possible, share a list of follow-up activities, research topics, or discussion points that the teacher might use to reinforce the concepts you have presented. Such materials expand the impact of your presentation beyond a one-shot performance and provide the teachers with resources to enrich their students learning.
You may consider encouraging teachers to do additional demonstrations and provide materials and instructions for them to repeat your demonstration. By doing this, you not only reach more students, but allow the teacher to gain recognition. Ultimately, your approach should proliferate until you have essentially "worked yourself out of a lob."

Make Safety Your First Priority
Although the guidelines we have suggested above concentrate on the pedagogical issues of working with a pre high school class, safety also must be considered at all aspects of your involvement. The following suggestions should be considered as you prepare and do your presentation. A more detailed discussion of the safety issues has been prepared by the ACS Safety Committee.

1. Don't take short cuts on safety! Wear your goggles. Provide goggles for your volunteers, assistants, and students who will come in contact with any chemicals. (Children's sized goggles are available from many science suppliers.) Remember, as a visiting scientist you are a professional role model: the impression you leave with young children can influence them for a lifetime.
2. Will there be ample adult supervision? (Parent volunteers can be added to assist you; ask the classroom teacher for advice.)
3. Consider safety for the audience as well as the presenter. Think about: Will it bubble all over the table? Will it throw sparks? Will it leave a slippery residue on the floor?
4. Specifically demonstrate proper technique, pointing out what you are doing, if appropriate. Demonstrate care and proper procedures when showing students concentrated acids and bases, volatile substances, and toxic substances.
5. Explosions and fires may be dramatic, but they may also be frightening. You must consider the impact on the students observing then—do you want to leave the message that chemistry is scary, noisy, and dangerous? Elementary classrooms are not equipped to handle such demonstrations.
6. Leave no waste behind! If you take it in, you carry it out! Pre high school classes are not equipped for any type of disposal. Even such seemingly innocuous items as paper cups, popsicle sticks, and zip-closing plastic bags containing the remains of an experiment can be very dangerous to the enthusiastic student who will innocently fish them out of the waste and play with the remains. A garbage bag is a handy thing to take with you.
7. Take only what you need. Avoid taking a large reagent-size container into the classroom when you need only a few mL.
8. Do not bring concentrated reagents if they are not needed. Carry out preliminary preparations that are not integral to the goal and success of the lesson prior to entering the classroom.
9. Emphasize that all chemicals must be treated with respect. Remind students that this includes everything from sand to people.

For Further Information
Excellent hands-on activities can be gleaned from popular science books for children or from materials especially designed for teachers of pre high school classes. You may also wish to read more about the following:

I. COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY

Learning to Learn, by Joe Novak
Circles of Learning, by Johnson and Johnson
Piaget for Educators, by Sund and Bybee
The Piaget Primer, by Labinowicz

II. IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM

Read Science and Children, the journal published by the National Science Teachers Association and "Chemistry for Kids" in the Journal of Chemical Education WonderScience, by the American Chemical Society's Pre High School Office.