To: Parents and Guardians From: ___, Principal The science faculty and administration of ____________ Middle School are pleased to announce a change in your child's science curriculum. This semester, in place of our traditional unit on weather, we will be using an Event-Based Science (EBS) unit called Hurricane! Event-Based Science is a middle school science curriculum that was developed with support of a grant from the National Science Foundation. EBS uses television news coverage of real events to introduce science topics. The event becomes the context for meaningful learning as students focus on solving a real problem. An EBS unit takes about six weeks to complete. During that time, your child will be designing experiments and conducting investigations that provide the knowledge and skills needed to solve the problem. Your child will also be challenged to ask questions and to find additional information from many different sources, including you. During this EBS unit, your child will be playing a role and working together with other children who will each be playing a different role. Event-Based Science provides a natural connection to the home and community. Ask you child about Hurricane! Help with the search for information. Find out about the roles the children are playing and see if your job or hobby is like one of those roles. If so, perhaps you can be a consultant. Or, perhaps you can help by making yourself available by phone or e-mail. Call and volunteer! We are excited about this new way to teach science. We are convinced that it will help all children in our school learn in a natural way. It will also demonstrate the usefulness of science in the lives or ordinary people.