Lauder School, Budapest Hungary
Fanni and I taught two 9th grade physical science classes in one class period in the morning and two 10th grade chemistry classes in the afternoon.
The freshman students do not take science this year to have more time to improve their English skills, which, I must say, are commendable by their sophomore year. For their class we decided on a stand-alone concept about methods of separation of mixtures. In the first part of the lesson we focused on helping students come up with everyday examples of homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures and methods that could be used to separate mixtures such as oil and water. I must say that Lauder students are as creative and clever as any students I have seen. They were able to come up with out of the box ideas, some that I haven’t heard before. Usually my students will suggest boiling a mixture to separate components based on their boiling points, but Lauder students thought of freezing the mixtures to separate oil and water based on their freezing points!
After lunch, sophomores worked enthusiastically on building the fructose and sucrose models for the new lesson on carbohydrates. Some groups or more zealous than others and we attributed their surplus of energy to the fact that their models made of marshmallows were diminishing in size proportionally to their working speed.
I think the highlight of the day were the messages that JDS students sent to Lauder students. My students might be a little disappointed to know that Lauder students are fast chemistry code-breaker. After they chemically revealed the blank messages, it took them but a few seconds to “read” them as they figured out that the jumble of numbers and letters must stand for either atomic numbers or the position of the element in the periodic table or, in some cases, for chemical symbols!
I hope that our work today carries on this evening at the dinner table in the homes of my adopted students.
Note to my students at home (who I miss, but whom are in good hands enjoying Mrs. Jacobs’ erudition and sparkling personality):
This evening I bought a bottle of water and even though my Hungarian improved by one word today – “igen”, I was still worried that I might get some sugary water by mistake. Then, I remembered to read the label. Lo and behold! I was able to understand every word! Science is indeed an universal language that all of us should be able to speak.
