Welcome to the Science of Golf! NBC Learn has partnered with the United States Golf Association (USGA) and Chevron to bring you this video series highlighting the science, technology, engineering, and math behind the sport. And once again, NSTA has developed lesson plans to help you build on the videos as you carry out STEM initiatives in your middle- and high-school science courses.

Whether you’re a fan who follows Rory, Phil, Paula, and Suzann, a player yourself, or someone like my farmer father who says that hitting a little white ball around a pasture just doesn’t make much sense, the sport can bring STEM concepts to life for your students. Use the video Science of Golf: Work, Power, and Energy as a springboard for student investigations into these concepts. The lesson plan provides you with ideas and guidance on how to get started.

The videos are available cost-free on www.NBCLearn.com. NSTA will also highlight each video in the series in this blog over the next weeks, within the Videos and Lessons category, and we hope you will try them out in the classroom. When you do, please leave comments below each posting about how well the information worked in real-world classrooms. And if you had to make significant changes to a lesson, we’d love to see what you did differently, as well as why you made the changes. Leave a comment, and we’ll get in touch with you with submission information.

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Image of putt courtesy of Michelle Hofstrand.

Video

SOG: Work, Power, and Energy features professional golfer Suzann Pettersen and her putting prowess to show how work done on the ball changes energy from its potential to kinetic form.

STEM Lesson Plan—Adaptable for Grades 7–12

The lesson plan provides ideas for STEM exploration plus strategies to support students in their own quest for answers and as well as a more focused approach that helps all students participate in hands-on inquiry.

SOG: Work, Energy, and Power describes how students might investigate a question about how one might putt a golf ball and calculate energy gain or less and power delivered.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans: [contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

I’ve been reading NSTA’s K-12 journals for many years. This is the first time I can remember that all three have the same theme at the same time. The summer issue for each—Science & Children, Science Scope, and The Science Teacher have featured articles on scientific argumentation. Teachers at all grade levels can find articles with suggestions for incorporating scientific discourse and argumentation into lessons.
Unfortunately, many students (and adults) have misconceptions about the word argument. They see TV shows where arguing is the most common activity. People shout at and interrupt each other, spout ideas that may have little or no truth to them, ignore facts and evidence, and have little tolerance for different points of view or experiences.
But argumentation in science has a different meaning. “Engaging in argument from evidence” is one of the Science and Engineering Practices in the NGSS. As students engage in investigations, they develop claims and support them with evidence. They critique ideas, propose alternate explanations, and communicate their understandings.
The skills involved in argumentation have to be taught and modeled. I’m looking forward to reading articles in these issues with suggestions and real-life examples of what this kind of activity looks like and sounds like in K-12 classrooms.
As part of an NSTA membership, we have access to all three of these journals. With a common theme, teachers can see what the process looks like from kindergarten through grade 12. I’d encourage teachers to skim the contents of all three. Secondary teachers can see what younger students are capable of doing and find ideas that can be kicked up a notch or two for their own students, Elementary teachers can see how what they’re doing can fit with what older students do and identify activities to challenge their students.
As I head to the beach for the holiday week, I’ve packed my iPad with all three journals.
See also: Who Doesn’t Like a Good Argument?
 

I’m trying to incorporate more inquiry activities into my fourth and fifth grade science classes. The students seem to enjoy them, and I can tell from talking to them and reviewing their notebook entries that they are learning content and skills. However , my principal has noted to me that students were off-task during his 10-minute walkthroughs.  How should I respond? How can I tell if students are really on-task and engaged in the activities?
–Michael, Orlando, FL
You could ask your principal how he determined in a 10-minute visit that elementary students were off-task! In a busy science classroom, there will be many levels of activity that ebb and flow with the task itself, the time of day, the combinations of students, and other factors. The bottom line is that you have evidence they are learning from the activities. But before you approach him with your evidence, here are a few points to consider.
The writer Alfie Kohn suggests “When students are off task, our first response should be to ask, ‘What’s the task?’” It’s hard for fourth and fifth graders—or students at any other grade level—to sit still through class after class of worksheets, silent reading, death-by-PowerPoint lectures, or copying notes from the board without getting restless (just as it’s hard for their teachers to sit through similar activities at a meeting or workshop). Even videos or multimedia can become distracting or lose their ability to engage if students perceive them as time-fillers and don’t know how they relate to the learning goals. I could tell my seventh graders were not engaged when, after a few minutes at an assignment, the requests to use the restroom or get a drink or water began, along with “What time is this class over?” But when I structured the same activities as cooperative learning, provided a choice of activities, or when the activities required more student involvement, questioning, or creativity, the requests seldom appeared. Other positive signs were  “Is the class over already? Can we continue tomorrow?” comment sat the end of the period.
However, with all due respect to Mr. Kohn, I think the first response to a student that appears to be off-task should be for you or your principal to ask the student “Hmm…What are you doing?” You might find out that what appeared to be an off-task behavior was very much on-task for that student.

I learned this from the experiences my siblings and I had in elementary school (and I can only imagine the phone calls my parents received). For example, during seatwork or a class discussion, I would gaze out of the window or stare into space. I wish teachers would have asked me what I was thinking about instead of telling me to stop daydreaming and pay attention or get back to work. I could have told them I was thinking about what was being said or visualizing the connections between the new information and what I already knew (and yes, once in a while I was lost in space and just needed a gentle reminder to come back to Earth). My brother was a socializer in school. He loved to talk and listen to people. Perhaps he and his friends were talking about unrelated topics, but some of their sidebar conversations may have been relevant to the class topic or consisted of more in-depth discussions. The teachers could have discovered this with a simple question instead of giving detentions or sending them to the office for talking in class. If teachers would have looked at or asked about my sister’s doodles instead of telling her to put her pencil down, they would have seen an artist at work, taking in the information and reformatting it graphically. (By the way, all three of us applied our dreaming, talking, and drawing to successful careers in science, business, teaching, and the arts.)
Your principal may even find that asking students to explain what is happening or what they’re doing can be helpful in other situations, including discipline referrals, as described in a recent blog.
Photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fontplaydotcom/504443770/