As the school year comes to a close (how it’s flown by!), we’re already thinking ahead to the next year of LPS. Leading up to registration opening over the summer for teachers, scientists, and coordinators to sign up for participation next year, we’re excited to start a series of posts highlighting many of the ways this program impacts the lives of its participants. Over the coming months, we’ll highlight our classrooms, scientists, and the LPS team. Hopefully these posts will inspire you to continue with or join LPS next year!
For our first “Why join LPS?” highlight, we talked to Ms. Wojnar’s 5th graders about why they like getting letters from their scientists:
I like getting letters…
…so that I can learn more about chemicals.
…so that I know what my scientist has been doing.
…because I like to read about what my penpal is doing in their life.
…because they are interesting to read.
…because it is nice to hear from someone from a different state.
…so I can communicate with different people.
…because the letters make me curious and happy.
…because it is interesting to see what my scientist is doing.
…because it is interesting to hear from people from other states.
…because I get to learn more about science.
…because I like to learn about their lives.
…because they include lots of details and they are interesting.
…because I get to learn new things.
…because I can learn about what a scientist does.
As you can see, each of the pre-scientists takes away something slightly different from this program based on their individual interests, but it is evident that they all enjoy hearing from their pen pals. The pre-scientists are learning both about science and about the lives of scientists, and this shows them that scientists come from all walks of life, from all over the world, and from all different backgrounds. Clearly our pre-scientists are inspired by the relationships they’ve each formed with their scientist over the year!
In our next post, we will show that this inspiration goes both ways, and that our scientists gain a lot from their pre-scientist pen pals, too!
