Featured Story: Middle School Science

Walk into a middle school science classroom in Worthington Schools and you may find students examining pine cones and apples, singing about thermal energy, or debating how to solve a scientific problem.

While the activities may look different from traditional science lessons, they share a common purpose: helping students become curious thinkers, resilient learners, and problem solvers.

At McCord Middle School, science teacher Ty Hollinger creates learning experiences that encourage students to investigate questions rather than simply memorize answers.

"We work really hard to not just be worksheet-based or textbook-based, but to engage kids in experiences constantly," Hollinger said.

Recently, students explored how living things create new living things by examining everyday objects such as apples and pine cones. Rather than being given all the answers, students observed, questioned, and developed explanations through exploration.

"We're not filling in a lot of blanks in our class," Hollinger said. "When we talk about students being solution seekers, we're doing that constantly. We're solving problems. We're giving students challenges to think through."

The process is intentionally messy.

Students ask questions, test ideas, make mistakes, and often discover new paths of inquiry along the way. Hollinger believes those moments create the most meaningful learning because students have ownership of the experience.

"We're doing authentic science," he said. "We don't get things right the first time. Students raise questions, and we may follow those and explore those. It creates an experience where students have ownership."

That ownership mirrors how students naturally engage with their interests outside of school.

"Kids love playing video games because they get to pick how they want to explore," Hollinger said. "In science, they get to explore the topic in a way that is meaningful and helps us meet our learning goals."

At Worthingway Middle School, science teacher Claire Cressman takes a different—but equally creative—approach.

Sometimes that means turning science concepts into songs.

"H-O-T-C-O-L-D, the direction of thermal energy," Cressman sings with her students.

The catchy tunes have become so memorable that families often join in.

"I've had parents come in and say, 'We sang your song all weekend,'" she said.

For Cressman, music and creativity help students build lasting connections to scientific concepts.

"Sometimes we're doing a lesson and I find words like position, condition, and chemical composition rhyme," she said. "And I'm like, we're making a song."

The goal is simple: create experiences students will remember long after they leave middle school.

"So many kids come back year after year," Cressman said. "The high schoolers are like, 'I used control to compare, and I used it on a test. Thank you.'"

Those moments reinforce her belief that making learning memorable leads to stronger understanding over time.

"Giving ways for kids to remember topics in hopes for later retention of those concepts—and having fun with those concepts—makes it all worth it for them in the long run," she said.

Cressman's philosophy was shaped by a piece of advice she received early in her career from longtime Worthington educator Kathy Surmeck.

"She told me, 'There's magic in what you're doing by teaching science as magic,'" Cressman recalled.

Today, that idea continues to guide her work.

"My job is to make them love science," she said. "Most of what I teach will be repeated in high school. But if they see the magic now, a few years from now they'll have that love and confidence that they can succeed."

Whether students are singing scientific principles, investigating real-world phenomena, or pursuing answers to their own questions, Worthington's middle school science classrooms are helping learners build the skills outlined in the district's Portrait of a Learner: curiosity, resilience, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

And along the way, they are discovering that science is not just something to study—it's something to experience.