Carroll Education Foundation's Grant Recipients and Sponsors 2009

The mission of Carroll Independent School District is to provide each student with an individualized and personalized education. Through the use of Full Option Science Systems, or FOSS, kits students have the opportunity to learn science through hands on investigations and learning experiences. Students are engaged in activities that interest them, as well as provide them with a solid foundation for future science classes. Delta Education, the creators of FOSS, put it best when they said that students “involved in learning something of interest come to understand the concept more fully, remember them longer after the experience, and develop confidence in their ability to find things out and to understand science.” At present, our campus does not have the materials necessary to provide our students with the most enriching science curriculum available. Often times fourth grade classes watch videos of experiments instead of actually completing experiments in class in order to provide our students with at least some exposure to the experiments. Watching a video does not provide students with the same opportunity as participating in a hands on science experiment. While our science lab has some supplies, our lab teacher is often using these supplies at the same time that the classroom teachers need them as we all follow the district’s scope and sequence. Through the use of FOSS kits, our students will move from participating in hands on science experiments to using analytical thinking to relate abstract ideas to their investigations. FOSS also provides the opportunity to integrate all subject areas into the science curriculum. Students will be reading information associated with these kits, as well as journaling their results to the experiments. Non-fiction literature was an addition to the fourth grade Reading TAKS test a few years ago.