National Grant to Warner School Researcher Signals Potential of Science-Based Curriculum in Preschool

June 5, 2000

Improving student performance in the classroom will be hard-pressed to succeed nationally unless the youngest children enter school ready to learn. With the support of a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, a University of Rochester professor will test and document an integrated preschool curriculum with science as the key to building knowledge and skills.

Lucia French, associate professor at the University's Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, will establish two more sites where children learn in an inquiry-based science environment. The three-year NSF grant acknowledges the importance of the preschool science curriculum and its potential for national significance.

"The daily routine and the classroom layout look like a regular preschool program,"says French of her ScienceStart! Curriculum, "but science is the hub around which the teachers and children's activities are organized. Science meets every child's need to understand the world through active investigation."The grant will support writing about the curriculum since its development in Rochester five years ago at Third Presbyterian Church, testing it at other sites, and creating methods to document children's progress while they participated in the project.

French's focus is quite different from early childhood programs that scatter science activities throughout their schedule. As coordinator of The Demonstration Project, Third Church Early Childhood Programs, French's curriculum embraces science-and the cycle of inquiry that advances science-as an essential part of the preschool experience.

For example, teachers using the curriculum develop each week's lesson plan using a "planning wheel" designed