Teaching Science
Parvati Mara has recently retired from her post as school inspector of science in Gauteng. She has dedicated her professional life to the emotional and cognitive development of children. She was a renowned and well-liked science teacher, before her promotion to inspector. Even as inspector she liked nothing better than to visit schools, observe classes and provide support to the science teachers.
She has long maintained that school children only learn optimally when their different senses are engaged, when they can play and touch things, have fun and share the learning experience with each other. This is especially true for the learning of science. However, the schools that Parvati visited were mostly severely under-resourced, and usually lacked laboratories and basic scientific instruments. As a result, teachers simply talked and children tried to absorb the learning material, with very little physical engagement with the fascinating world of science.
Parvati has decided to devote her retirement years to addressing this shortcoming. The best way to engage children with science is to present them with simple, but fascinating experiments where they have to design and build their own scientific instruments out of widely available material. In the process, they can engage their senses and learn some science!
Winning Team #
The Ubuntu Bashers Members:
- Johan Havenga
- Buntu Ngcebetsha
- Chris Finlay
- Isaac Sihlangu