“My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas.”
This mnemonic or memory device tells us the order of planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, although the last has been demoted to the status of dwarf planet.
Clif CleavelandMore than 20 years since learning this, Robin Posey, director of programs at the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, recalls this and much more from a science class at her elementary school. She describes the teacher of that class as one of the most inspiring in all her years of formal education. I arranged a visit with the teacher.
The most engaging class I’ve ever experienced in science occurred on Feb. 13 at Big Ridge Elementary School, a public school in Chattanooga. Ronald Boston, who is in his 28th year of teaching science, got up early that day to crack through the ice on his pond to retrieve jars of water for his fifth-grade students to study under the microscope. Prepared, stained slides cost too much and would not allow students to study living organisms, so he was making his own.
Class began with the playing of a rap tune that described mitosis, the process of division of living cells. Students sang along. After a brief discussion about food chains and the variety of microscopic life in ponds, students began scanning the drops of water pipetted onto their glass slides. Two students shared each microscope. Finishing work on a slide, students cleaned it before Boston served up a fresh drop from a jar drawn from a deeper level of the pond.