Editor's Corner Novermber/December 2024

To support the development of scientific literacy and student confidence in expressing their ideas and receiving feedback, the first author established a writing center in a large urban fringe high school. Using the peer-assisted learning (PAL) model, the center fostered leadership, emotionally supported students as they developed peer collaborations, and built student self-confidence while they learned to engage in rich science discourse and communicate in multiple ways. This article outlines some of the benefits and logistics of creating and running a writing center.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a human-centered multidisciplinary engineering course for high school students. The course was implemented and modified for both in-person and online modalities. Students worked in small groups and designed exhibits for children. They engaged in understanding the design thinking principles, and delivered a low-fidelity physical prototype or a conceptual design, depending on the format of the classes. Below, we describe the design and implementation of the course and share areas of improvement.

This article describes four collaborative activities that we facilitate to engage high school chemistry students in the scientific practice of developing and using models in a chemical bonding unit. The activities presented incorporate both collaborative group work and kinesthetic methods to promote active student learning of chemical bonding concepts. These activities also support the development of essential skills such as teamwork and communication. We discuss how we have adapted these activities to be accessible for students and how these activities can also be used as a form of formative assessment within a larger unit on chemical bonding. We have found that these collaborative activities foster a more connected and joyful learning environment for us as educators and for the students in our classrooms.

This activity gives students the opportunity to design an experiment, collect data, and solve for the spring constant of different springs. The use of low-cost materials and the inquiry-based structure makes it more accessible for teachers and more engaging for students. It can be scaffolded in several different ways, so that each teacher can differentiate according to the needs of their physics students. Some common student misconceptions are also addressed to assist teachers in their preparation for leading this activity.

The ability to interpret graphs is foundational to understanding many science topics, although mastering this skill can prove challenging to many students. This article illustrates how a lesson on motion graphs was implemented in physical science classes using modern smartphone LiDAR technology. It also presents the differences in accessibility and student motivation that resulted from instruction with the novel technology as compared with commercially available sonic rangers. With the help of a free, publicly-available, gamified app, students used their walking movements to match motion graphs of increasing difficulty. Students demonstrated shifts in their intuition for making graphs and showed significant gains on a pre-post assessment. Teachers observed increased enthusiasm for learning about graphs with mobile devices.

Lithium-ion batteries solve many problems, yet also create new problems like thermal runaway. To better understand the phenomenon themselves, the authors participated in a two-day workshop about the science of thermal runaway, when lithium-ion batteries enter an uncontrollable self-heating state; then collaborated to transform these experiences in potentially meaningful ways for their students. Beginning units of instruction with good phenomenon like overcharging a lithium-ion battery or lab footage of what happens when batteries are damaged, piques and sustains student curiosity, interest, and engagement. Penuel and Bell (2016) outline qualities of good anchor phenomenon as those that are observable, build on experience, apply all dimensions of Next Generation Science Standards, requires more than a single lesson, and utilize multiple sources of information as part of the sense-making process. In this manuscript, the authors overview their professional development experiences and successful sequence of lessons; but then specifically detail the more impactful lesson about overcharging. The authors have chosen to highlight this lesson for two reasons: (a) its potential to broaden awareness of safe charging practices, and (b) the undeniable impact it had on the safety practices in their students’ lives.

In recent years, some communities have experienced extreme conditions of drought: reduced water supply for farms, increased wildfires, and decreased water availability in reservoirs and groundwater basins. This article details how high school juniors in an environmental science course engaged in collaborative teams and with a municipal water conservation specialist to design possible ways to address community-based drought issues. This project provided students the opportunity to experience the design process through envisioning technologies or approaches to help their own community address a water shortage problem while considering environmental, social, and economic implications of their proposed solution. Students defined the problem by obtaining information from news articles, textual information, and conversations with the water specialist. Proposed solutions were evaluated and refined through a peer critique process and feedback from the water specialist. Specific strategies are presented to foster group members’ skill development in collaboration, reflection, productive critique/feedback, and revision of solutions. The project rubric is provided to illustrate a means to assess students’ consideration of relevant factors impacting their design solution. This project served as an authentic learning experience whereby student teams were selected to present their problem solutions to the Sustainability Committee of the local water company.

Direct experiences in the living world are a major ally in helping students understand biology and the practice of science, and in fostering a lifelong love for nature. The positive impact of field study on students’ experiences and outcomes, and the health and mental benefits of being outdoors, are supported by considerable literature. As a teacher at the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science, I was inspired by my graduate experiences with the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), a consortium of institutions dedicated to the training of tropical biologists, to develop a field research biology curriculum for high school students that was enthusiastically embraced and well-remembered by my students. I provide specifics about the design of the curriculum, detail ways that biology teachers might adapt this curriculum to their own programs to the benefit of their students and make suggestions about overcoming practical obstacles. I hope to convince teachers and administrators that the value of implementing research-oriented field programs in secondary education far outweighs the necessary effort.

Collaborating effectively in small groups is an important skill for students, especially in classrooms adopting science education reforms like the NGSS, but it is also an extremely challenging skill. In this article, I share how I use group roles as a scaffold to help students collaborate productively and equitably. I discuss two types of roles and the strengths and limitations of each. Task-oriented roles, where students are assigned a role based on specific tasks they will complete, such as operating a timer, are very effective when students are doing an activity like a lab that requires several tasks to be done at the same time, but do not push students to meaningfully interact with their peers’ ideas. Process-oriented roles focus on different ways for students to engage with each other’s thinking, which supports collaborative sensemaking. In this article I share examples of each type of role, discuss when I use each type, and share logistics such as how I introduce and manage each type of role. Using group roles and attending to what purpose they serve within an activity has improved the quality of student collaboration in my classroom.