Subject Spotlight: Science @ DA
Story by Dylan Howlett and Sreshta Chalicham ’28 | Photography by Dylan Howlett
8-minute read
During the 2023–2024 school year, we parachuted into classrooms across Durham Academy’s four divisions to reveal the magic of math, language arts and fine arts instruction.
Our Subject Spotlight series returns this week with a look at DA’s science curricula and the power of observation: of things living and nonliving, of winged insects striking and illustrative, of phenomena weird and inexplicable, and of densities uncertain and calculable.
Kindergarten: Dr. Theresa Shebalin’s Classroom
As the Koalas kindergarten class prepares to file into her classroom, Preschool science teacher Dr. Theresa Shebalin gives the students an expectant look. “We are going to do something a little bit different today,” she says. They’re going to visit Sylvia.
The Koalas have met Sylvia before. “Dan the Animal Man,” a wildlife educator and regular visitor to the Preschool and Lower School campus, advised Shebalin that if she ever wanted an animal for her classroom, she should get one of the world’s most misunderstood animals that also happens to play an essential role in its ecosystem. It just so happened that another Dan — Gilson, DA’s director of Extended Day — was looking to rehome a four-year-old ball python. So it was last spring that Sylvia the Snake came to occupy a glass tank in the back corner of Shebalin’s classroom. And so it was, on this Friday morning, that 19 Koalas got to see Sylvia shed her skin.
“Keep your observations in your head until we get to the carpet,” Shebalin says to the Koalas as they take a careful lap around Sylvia’s enclosure. Hushed murmurs of excitement and wonder fill the room as the students file one by one around the tank. They return to the carpet to field Shebalin’s question, and one of science’s most foundational queries: What happened?
“She’s shed her skin!” Luke says, and his fellow scientists nod furiously. We shed our skin constantly as new cells replace old cells, Shebalin says. But unlike us, Sylvia doesn’t take a bath every day. Instead, Shebalin says, she sheds once every two months.
“I want you,” Shebalin says to the Koalas, “to think like a scientist.” She reminds them of the activity they completed the day before, in which they sorted objects into “living” and “nonliving” categories. Does the snakeskin, Shebalin wonders aloud, come from a living or nonliving thing? The Koalas raise their hands with an index finger held aloft to indicate the snakeskin is, indeed, living.
That is the central question of the game the Koalas will play today: sorting cards according to whether they believe the featured picture represents something that is living, nonliving or unclear. “It’s OK to use the ‘I don’t know card,’” Shebalin says. “That means we’re going to learn something new.” She starts to model the activity, which students will complete in groups of four or five. “I am going to put a beach ball in the ‘living’ category,” she says theatrically. “No!” the students cry in unison as they hold outstretched arms in front of them to form an “X.”
The students begin, and a cacophony of hypotheses and assertions and respectful disagreements rise above the tables. When the first table finishes, Shebalin walks over to evaluate their work. “I want you to think about this one again,” she says, pointing to a picture of an envelope that has wound up in the “nonliving” pile. A boy’s eyes bulge. “It comes from a tree!” he says. “Living!”
After a few more minutes, Shebalin pauses the other groups to review their answers. She asks for their nonverbal agreement or disagreement. Soon they reach a consensus about nonliving (beach ball, metal can) and living (pie, mushroom, taco, cardboard) examples. Shebalin holds up a picture of a paper cup, which has largely befuddled the groups. “No matter what you think,” she says, smiling, “you’re right — and you’re also wrong.” The paper cup, she explains, comes from a living tree. But the plastic coating that encases the exterior is a nonliving substance. “This,” Shebalin says, “is a mixture.” And this is an opportunity for a waste management tutorial to benefit DA’s youngest learners.
Before they leave, Shebalin, who also serves as Preschool sustainability coordinator, walks over to her “lunch cart,” a three-tiered pushcart that features an “I Don’t Know” bin on its middle shelf. It’s the preferred receptacle for Preschoolers who aren’t sure whether an item from their lunch should be ticketed for compost, recycling or trash.
It is, perhaps, not as gripping as shed snakeskin. But a neutral observer would never know it from the final moments of Shebalin’s class, when a handful of students stand and gather excitedly around the “I Don’t Know” bin so they’ll recognize it at future lunch periods.
A scientist, after all, embraces uncertainty. Sylvia looks on approvingly from her enclosure.
Third Grade: Diane Daly and Lori Evans’ Classroom
On this Friday afternoon, the Lower School science room is a hive of scientific communication. The 18 students from Jeff Burch’s third grade class are drawing and labeling the structures of a honeybee, and they’re doing so according to the criteria that their teachers — Lower School science teacher Diane Daly and science teaching assistant Lori Evans — have laid out on the whiteboard at the front of the room. BIG. Details. Color. Label.
But before they start drawing, the students share aloud the physical characteristics of a honeybee. They have four wings, which create a buzzing sound when they move fast enough. They have a “pollen basket” to limit their back-and-forth trips between flowers and their hive. They have a specific pattern and a stinger on their abdomen. “We learn very quickly,” Daly says, “that’s an animal that can defend itself.” A lettered marquee-style sign beams today’s edict from the front of the room: Busy as a Bee!
The students break off into groups of three at individual tables, where they observe a honeybee specimen with the use of a jeweler’s loupe — a round handheld magnifier — and an index card-sized image of a honeybee. At any point, they may visit the back table and peer through any one of six magiscopes — rudimentary microscopes — that display a specific honeybee structure (abdomen, legs, proboscis, antenna, wings). At his group’s table near the front of the room, Alex raises to his eye the transparent cube containing the honeybee specimen. “Oh, my God!” he says. “It’s so small.”
As their students scrutinize the honeybee structures, Daly and Evans push for specificity. “If we see stick figures,” Evans says, “we’re going to ask you to go back and take a closer look.” Daly nods. “This is a very slow drawing,” she says. It should take the whole hour-long class period. One boy takes it to heart. “Details! Details!” he says as he exhorts his two groupmates to draw with more precision.
The magiscopes inspire exclamations of wonder. Ooooooohhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhh! Whooooaaaaaa! Evans circulates and delivers ample encouragement. “Beautiful, Isabel! Beautiful, Lucas! Beautiful, Julianna!” She fills the budding scientists with unmistakable purpose. “This is one of the most important skills you will learn,” Evans says.
Daly encourages students who haven’t yet visited the magiscopes to do so. “I think you might want to look at the real thing,” she says. “You’ll be surprised.” She takes a look at Kit’s drawing and suggests she examine the bee’s legs under the magiscope. Kit follows Daly’s advice before returning to her seat. “What do you notice?” Daly asks. Kit says the legs are jointed with a noticeable bend that her straight-legged bee drawing currently doesn’t reflect.
She enthusiastically grabs a colored pencil and starts to make necessary adjustments, while her classmates fastidiously evaluate their own drawings for accuracy in color, dimension and texture. An unmistakable buzz fills the room as the third graders gain their scientific wings.
Fifth Grade: Will Cranch’s Classroom
Will Cranch looks at his 18 students with a gentle expression of comfort. “Can you raise a quiet hand,” he asks, “if you’re thirsty?”
It’s a fitting offer on this day, when Cranch’s fifth graders will start a new lab investigation — their first proper lab experience as Middle Schoolers. All 18 students raise their hands. One lucky winner approaches Cranch, who holds in front of him a plastic goblet. Jacob’s face lights up as he watches the scene play out. “That’s the greedy cup!” he exclaims.
Cranch pours what he says is fruit punch — he later tells the class it’s merely dyed water — into the cup until it spills out of the bottom through a siphon. The episode bears striking resemblance to the Pythagorean cup, the source of a practical joke dating back to the 1st century C.E., in which a greedy and unsuspecting victim would spill on themselves if they added too much liquid. The fifth graders learn about this genesis in the background reading of the lab, which Cranch and fellow Middle School science teacher Karen Malhiot created this past summer to engage students in one of the scientific method’s most valuable skills: devising, and asking, testable research questions.
Jack walks up to the board and points to a cross-section photo of the cup. “I don’t understand. If the water comes up here,” he says, raising two outstretched index fingers to emulate rising water, “why doesn’t it just come back down to here?” Cranch smiles. “That’s what we’re going to figure out today,” he says.
In Lower School, Cranch tells DA’s newest Middle Schoolers, investigations often begin with a question. “Today,” he says, “we’re going to flip the script.” The fifth graders will create a lab question based on the lab background and their provided materials.
Cranch distributes a deck of flashcards to each table of three to four students. The nine cards are divided into a color-coordinated trio of categories that all scientific questions must contain: a question word (pink), what’s being tested or changed (blue) and what’s being measured or observed (green). At a table toward the back of the room, a group starts to manipulate the cards into a scientific query. How does increasing … pressure … affect the time it takes to drain? Within five minutes, Cranch has signed off on each group’s testable question. “It’s time to collect data,” he says.
The groups fan out to lab sinks at the outer edges of the room. They are testing different variables — length, volume or time — with different sets of materials. A large soda bottle with three vertical holes. A smaller soda bottle with one hole. A graduated cylinder. A sand timer. A meter stick. There is no written procedure on the lab packet: Their only direction is the testable question they’ve posed.
The lab is, like the scientific method, one of purposeful messiness. Squeals erupt around the room as water sprays from the sink and sprouts from the holes punched through the sides of the soda bottles. The prevailing sentiment is excitement. “Don’t start without me!” one student says as he safely scampers to the sink for another trial. At the back of the room, Ellie accidentally runs away from the soda bottle without applying pressure to the sides of the bottle — so her group does it again. After more than a minute squeezing the soda bottle, Ellie is feeling it. “My fingies are starting to hurt!” she says. Science can be arduous.
Cranch, bedecked in a periodic table-patterned lanyard, circulates among the sinks and assesses each group’s progress. After about 10 minutes, he brings the class back together to remind the groups that everyone should have at least two numbers — and, ideally, three — recorded on their lab packets. “Now you see,” he says, “what a Middle School lab investigation is like.” More freedom, but more responsibility. He gives the fifth graders the final 10 minutes of class to start their homework, in which they’ll attempt to answer their scientific question.
At a table near the back, Fiona notes based on her group’s data that the three bottles of different sizes produced three different volumes of water drained. Her partner nods and tries to knead their observations into a scientific assertion. “The smaller the bottle,” he says, “the smaller the amount of millimeters that drains out of the bottle.” Cranch nods approvingly. “Your next sentence,” he says, “should provide some evidence.”
Science, much like a drink flying unsuspectingly out of the bottom of a cup, is uncomfortable. At the front of the room, Jack asks Cranch why his group has observed what they’ve observed. Cranch rests his arms on the edge of the table and peers into the eyes of three aspiring scientists.
“Find weird things in the world,” he says, “and figure out why those weird things are happening.”
He smiles.
“Sit with that discomfort.”
Honors Chemistry: Susan Brookhart’s Classroom
By Sreshta Chalicham ’28
Editor’s Note: Chalicham is serving as a contributor to News & Notes throughout the 2025–2026 school year. A 10th grader in Susan Brookhart’s Honors Chemistry course, Chalicham detailed her experience in a recent density-focused lesson.
Density equals mass divided by volume. In the Upper School’s Honors Chemistry course, students dive deeper into the concept under the engaging guidance of their teacher, Susan Brookhart. Honors Chemistry, a 10th grade class known to be challenging and rigorous, has a curriculum that prepares students for a future in advanced sciences. In today’s class, students are handed back their quizzes from the preceding class as Ms. Brookhart details procedures and possible mistakes within each question. Once the murmuring quiets and the students sheath their tests into binders, Ms. Brookhart divides the class into groups and asks them to collect whiteboards.
As the markers and boards are divided among them, each group is also presented with a small white cardboard box filled with density cubes of various substances. Some of these include acrylic, plastic, wood and a collection of metals. Groups draw particle diagrams of three of the substances in the box, and then the class discusses whether a particle’s size should affect its mass. (Hint: It should!) They come to multiple conclusions, so they once again turn to three specific cubes that Ms. Brookhart asks them to test: copper, aluminum and pine.
Given the density of each substance, and armed with prior knowledge about calculating density, students are tasked with finding the volume for three of these substances without using a beaker or water. After a few moments of pondering with their peers, students rush to the digital scales perched at each lab station. The students quickly weigh each cube, record its mass on their whiteboard and draw calculators from their backpacks to divide the mass by the given density. Once all the groups have completed their miniature experiment, they return to their seats and project their group’s answers on the board.
But when all of the answers differ, Ms. Brookhart fosters a discussion to answer a crucial question in the course: Why? The class soon concludes that since the elements are natural materials, the wood especially may have a difference in density due to holes or cracks within the cube. Once again, a mystery is solved.
With 15 minutes remaining in the class, students receive activity packets to bolster their density knowledge. A few minutes of silence and scratching pencils ensue: Each student is delving into their packet to practice for their upcoming quiz. At the end of the week, they have their first unit test, so Ms. Brookhart pauses the work session to introduce a new study method: retrieval practice, which is essentially an organized brain dump. She hands out templates for students to attempt the strategy.
The class comes to a close with a chorus of thank yous! as the chemists leave, their scientific knowledge feeling more dense — in a good way — than when they arrived this afternoon.