Nearly 20 activities in the
physical sciences and mathematics have been developed for
the BEAMS program. The focus of the activities reflects
the kind of science done at the Jefferson Lab (mainly
physics).
Most of the activities were
developed initially by BEAMS Project Director Dr. Beverly
Karplus Hartline and Ms. Kathryn Strozak, a former
teacher turned scientist, who once worked at the lab. Dr.
Hartline's father, the physicist and science educator,
Dr. Robert Karplus, was a developer of the elementary
science education curriculum called SCIS Science
Curriculum Improvement Study.
Hartline and Strozak developed
the activities on the basis of ideas from many sources to
satisfy the following criteria: the activities must use
concepts that students have learned about in school; they
must involve teamwork; they must be related to the
Jefferson Lab in some way; and they must be interesting,
exciting, and fun.
After the initial development
phase, other lab staff, such as Dr. Fred Dylla, added
finishing touches to some of the activities, such as
"Hot and Cold," which involves both the
coldness of liquid nitrogen and the extreme heat of
plasmas. Since the activities relate to the development
of the lab and its research, lab staff have continued to
play a critical role in ensuring that they are both
accurate and logistically easy to replicate in
classrooms.
In the three years after the
initial develoment of the activities, six teachers also
reviewed, revised, and even developed additional
activities for BEAMS. This phase included observation of
the activities as they were actually taught to visiting
classes. It is instructive to note that every single
BEAMS activity in use today is different from its
original version.
A set of activity sheets for
students and a BEAMS Teacher Book now exist for
use by volunteers in learning how to lead an activity and
by teachers who might lead some of the activities in
classrooms not acquainted with the BEAMS experience or
the lab.
Of the nearly 20 activities,
nine can currently be viewed and downloaded by accessing
the BEAMS
Website.
Currently under consideration
for development are life-science activities for the 7th
graders and physics activities for the 8th graders.
