As NSTA expands its efforts to develop Communities of Practice—particularly with its web presence—I thought I would share a few tips on how chapter or associated group leaders can engage and foster communication online.
If your chapter or associated group has an online community (using public networks like Facebook or Twitter or custom built systems) all of your work will be in vain unless your members and other constituents join the community and contribute to the discussion.
Here are a few tips from one of my fellow association executive colleagues, Paul Schneider:

1. Use expert bloggers.  Someone in the industry who may be willing to post blogs weekly or monthly (maybe with some incentive like free membership or a small stipend).
2. Ask a question about a hot topic. Everyone likes to offer their opinion and that generates conversation!
3. Post a survey… And have the results available to participants in the community.
4. What’s on the horizon? Send regular reminders about activities coming up soon.
5. Feature a “Member of the Week.” Highlight that person’s accomplishments in science education.
6. Staff blogs. If your organization has an executive staff person, have them provide a weekly blog highlighting their activities.

Above all else, the most important factor is that there is a full commitment to building these communities from your association’s leadership and those running the day-to-day operations.
Does your chapter or associated group have an online community?  Leave a comment and let us know how it’s going!

Exploring how sound is made is one way music is used in early childhood classrooms. I like to use a triangle to focus children’s attention on the tiny movement that generates the sound. They touch the still triangle and then remove their hand. I strike the triangle to make the sound and they touch it again (and shiver or giggle as the vibration tickles their fingers).

Next we pass the triangle and striker around the circle and one child holds the triangle while the other uses the striker. This way no one person can monopolize the equipment and we all get to feel the vibrations again. Sometimes in passing the triangle a child will hold the side of the instrument rather than the string and the resulting “thunk” (rather than a musical note) opens a discussion of how to change sounds.
Early childhood advocate and musician Miss Jackie lists many other reasons for using music in her November 11, 2010, blog posting, Music belongs in early childhood classrooms:

• Encourages taking turns. Partner songs and playing instruments teach sharing and respect for others.
• Builds self confidence. Singing songs and doing actions give children a feeling of power and control. These feelings of self esteem transfer to other aspects of life.
• Builds friendships. Group interaction is a positive way to develop relationships.
• Develops coordination. Actions with songs and movement are important for large and small muscle growth.
• Develops rhythm. Rhythm is necessary for understanding ourselves and the world.
• Inspires imagination. Music encourages children to use their imagination.
• Develops concentration and ability to focus. Memorizing words, listening for certain sounds are all part of this experience.

The skills of taking turns, building friendships, and ability to focus all contribute to learning science concepts. I use songs passed on to me by other teachers for transitions—to clean up or to gather the children in a circle for group time. “Take a seat on the floor, take a seat on the floor, all my friends come and take a seat on the floor. Not on the ceiling, not on the door, all my friends come and take a seat on the floor.” After a few weeks I do not sing the words “ceiling” and “door” but just point to them while the children sing. This transition song is effective because the humor and small act of participating helps them disengage from their previous activities. (In the best tradition of folk music, the tune I learned is not “Shortening Bread” as most online sites report, but has changed a bit.) See online versions of this song at:  www.songsforteaching.com/b/everybodyhaveaseat.htm and
http://www.preschooleducation.com/stransition.shtml
Where does music fit into your science teaching?
Peggy

My principal recently invited me to serve on the school improvement committee; both my mentor and the high school science department chair have urged me to accept. I’m just in my second year of teaching, so I’m not sure I would have anything to offer.
—Joseph, Columbia, South Carolina
Participating in a school-wide committee could be great opportunity for you to grow as a professional and develop as a teacher-leader. You can learn more about how science education fits into larger issues such as initiatives in other departments, school district policies, or state mandates. You’ll also have opportunities to work with administrators and teachers in different departments. In some schools, committee members and other teacher-leaders have priority for professional development opportunities including seminars and conferences.
What you can offer is a fresh view of situations and issues, as well as the perspective of newer teachers. You may have useful skills in technology, writing, or presenting. You can also be a voice for science teaching and learning.

You most likely would have to commit to after-school meetings, so you should consider other demands on your time (lesson planning, extracurricular activities, graduate classes, and other personal responsibilities) as you make your decision.
Assuming you accept, as the “newbie” on the committee, you would be wise to begin by observing the personal dynamics and listening to the conversations. How do the members interact with each other and with the committee chairperson? Do certain members (or the principal) dominate the conversations while others stay in the background? Are the conversations positive, focusing on identifying problems and solutions, or do the meetings become gripe sessions? How do the members react to different ideas or suggestions? Who are the thoughtful, reflective members? Who seems most resistant to change?
You can also use your status as new kid on the block to ask questions during the meetings: Why do we…? What would happen if…? Have we ever tried…? What is the purpose of …? If you get responses such as “We’ve always done things this way” or “We tried that years ago, and it didn’t work,” ask for clarification if necessary. I’ve been in meetings where these questions have lead to interesting discussions. Sometimes the discussions lead to changes in school practices; other times, the discussions centered on valid reasons for keeping a practice. Asking the right questions can be just as much of a contribution as having the answers.
It’s also important for science to be represented during discussions on curriculum development, scheduling, assessments, grading, professional development, budgeting, and strategic planning. You can provide background information on the importance of inquiry, safety concerns, laboratory space and storage requirements, technology issues, or problems faced by “floating” science teachers and their students.
Some veteran teachers may question your presence based on your experience level. I suspect, though, that others may be delighted that a newer member of the faculty is willing to become involved. Your principal, mentor, and department chair apparently see your potential for leadership.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsbrennan/4222955364/

Click here for the Table of Contents

• Teachers are powerful models if they demonstrate what they ask students to do.
• Teachers can increase the likelihood that students will ask investigable questions by providing hands-on experiences using provocative materials.
• It is sometimes difficult for teachers to enable students to think for themselves because a pervasive philosophy underpinning much of American education is that school experiences should pass on knowledge that has already been learned.
• Learning is a lifelong set of experiences—throughout most of our lives we do not have a teacher to guide us. Successful adults have confidence in their own ability to ask questions and to further their knowledge through various means of inquiry.

I heard a teacher say once that her ninth-grade students weren’t mature enough for inquiry learning. I hope she looks at the articles in this issue that show how younger students are indeed capable of asking investigable questions, given guidance and scaffolding by the teacher. Thought-Provoking Questions has sample lessons (for K-3 and 4-6) on generating questions. Ready…Set…Go has a lesson idea in which 4^th graders learned about testable questions in an active, game-like setting.
Children ask lots of questions already, so even kindergarten students can be part of the process, too.

Investigable Questions includes a lesson that shows how to turn the traditional growing-beans-in-a-cup into a fair-test investigation. Curiosity + Kindergarten = Future Scientists shows how even something as simple as an egg can be used to stimulate curiosity when the teacher responds to a question, not with an answer, but with “How can we find out?”
I think a lot of confusion results from not having a common language or definitions during a discussion. Attending a Science Institute describes how teachers differentiated between investigable questions and “I wonder” questions. There is also a discussion of how to help students learn to ask investigable questions: from giving examples to selecting one from a list of 3-4 to creating their own. “Hypothesis” is another word with many interpretations (I grit my teeth when I hear that it’s an “educated guess.”) To Hypothesize or Not discusses what a hypothesis is (and is not). It has a probe that can be used to assess your students’ (and your own) knowledge of hypotheses. I’d recommend this article and probe (a downloadable version is available) for teachers of any grade level.
A Quest to Improve describes similar categories of questions: philosophical questions that cannot be answered by science, questions regarding facts (names, size, definitions), and complex questions that need tweaking or fine-tuning in order to be investigable. The author describes and provides examples of investigable questions: descriptive, relational, and cause-effect. Also included are suggestions for science notebooks and a checklist for evaluating questions.
Personalized Inquiry describes classifying questions into three categories, based on how they might be answered: observational studies, experimentation, or finding the answers in the literature. A fourth category is for questions than cannot be answered scientifically. (Note: for questions literature-based questions, the websites in SciLinks could be useful to recommend to students.) The author includes examples of each and a set of lessons on generating questions. The “personalized” in the title refers to the fact that each student contributes a question to the list.


Current events in children’s lives can lead to investigable questions, too. In Learning from the Oil Spill, the author describes a three-week unit in which students investigate oil spills and cleanup methods. She provides a sample lesson to address the question: How can oil from a disastrous spill be contained and removed effectively from a large body of water? During the time of the spill, there were many online resources and updates to help students understand the impact of the situation. The recently announced Online Clearinghouse for Education And Networking – Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL) is just that – a collection of reviewed images, articles, and other content. If you’d like to compare the 2010 spill to a previous one, NOAA has created a comprehensive look at the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William’s Oily Mess This site is designed as a classroom resource with lesson plans, inquiry activities in a real-world context, photographs, readings, and interviews with scientists.
What Causes Things to Rust? has background information on the process. It’s a good introduction to Picture This!, which describes how first-graders use digital cameras to collect data to form questions and to investigate their questions.
SciLinks connections for content topics mentioned in the articles:

• Insects
• Marine ecosystems
• Rust (as a chemical change)
• Seed germination

And check out more Connections for this issue. Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, there are ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, and other resources.