By Peggy Ashbrook
Posted on 2010-06-29
In the interest of making it easier for early childhood educators to teach science, I am unabashedly tooting my own horn—read the Early Years column I write in the National Science Teachers Association’s elementary school journal, Science and Children. Not an NSTA member? Some of the Early Years columns are available online to non-members at no cost in the NSTA Learning Center if one follows these steps:
I think it will be worth your while to find columns about such topics as melting, inventing animals, and the sun’s energy. While you’re there take a look at some of the other benefits of membership. Members get one journal in the mail and online access to all four NSTA journals.
Is there a topic you would like me to write about in the Early Years column? Post a comment below and let me know.
Peggy
By Mary Bigelow
Posted on 2010-06-28
Congratulations to our new colleagues! Whether you’re a new college grad or changing to a new role as teacher, NSTA’s SciLinks can be a valuable resource for you. Through SciLinks, teachers and students can access vetted web pages that provide real-time information and new content on a host of science topics. The websites were selected and reviewed by a team of educators (aka “webwatchers”) before being added to the database. Some are tagged as teacher resources if they address professional issues, instructional strategies, or lesson plan suggestions.
There are two ways to find websites in SciLinks:
Once you find the websites related to your topic you can use them in several ways:
Recently, a “Quiz Manager” feature was added in which you can create questions for a particular website in the SciLinks database and assign students to complete them. Click here to read more about this feature.
Congratulations to our new colleagues! Whether you’re a new college grad or changing to a new role as teacher, NSTA’s SciLinks can be a valuable resource for you. Through SciLinks, teachers and students can access vetted web pages that provide real-time information and new content on a host of science topics.
By Howard Wahlberg
Posted on 2010-06-28
Highlights of stimulating conversations taking place right now on our listservs:
In NSTA’s online professional learning communities, welcome to our 82 new users this past month!
On our “core site” (www.nsta.org): read about our Urban Science Education Leadership Academy—and then register to attend!
On Facebook, educators are discussing registering for NSTA’s fall conferences, the first of which is in Kansas City.
On LinkedIn, more direct posts from NSTA’s Career Center, and discussions about springtime ferns and next generation education.
And of course, on our Twitter stream, science educators are tweeting and re-tweeting about several freebies that NSTA offers, the upcoming national San Francisco conference, and more!
Renew Your Membership!
Now is the time to insure that you don’t miss a single journal issue or one minute of the time you use to network and build professional connections here in these online communities. Click the link above to renew your membership and insure that NSTA stays in your corner for your science education career!
Highlights of stimulating conversations taking place right now on our listservs:
By Mary Bigelow
Posted on 2010-06-26
I teach fourth and fifth graders in our school’s “Discovery Lab.” With over 700 students I am constantly brainstorming procedures to help the lab run smoother. One thing that I want to try is to assign student roles for group work. Do you have suggestions for these roles or any other information that might be helpful?
—Melody, Grenada, Mississippi
Defining roles is a key component of cooperative learning where students share the responsibility for learning. The literature on cooperative learning describes a variety of roles: ones commonly used in science classes include group leader, data recorder, measurer, equipment manager, liaison/questioner, artist/illustrator, researcher, timekeeper, and notetaker.
However, most of these traditional roles focus on logistics and procedures. I recommend the article “Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists During Cooperative Investigations” in the April/May 2008 edition of Science Scope. The authors (Voreis, et al.) describe how they use cognitive, or thinking, roles to help students develop inquiry skills and focus their activities on higher-order discussions and questions. The article has detailed descriptions of their roles (evidence collector, prediction manager, skeptic, and researcher), guidelines for the type of questions and responsibilities for each role, and an example of an evaluation sheet.
Regardless of what roles you decide to use, have job descriptions for each. These could checklists, a bulletin board display, index cards, or a page in the students’ science notebooks. The job descriptions could include mini-rubrics and conversation starters.
If you have students with unpolished interpersonal skills, start with brief and highly structured activities. Model cooperative behaviors and examples of appropriate language. Ask students to describe how they and their teammates did their jobs (this could be an exit activity). Rotate the roles so students have a variety of experiences. Once students are comfortable with these roles, they could create video clips of what the roles “look like” in the lab setting.
To keep the groups focused and on-task, be sure students understand the expectations for the project or investigation. Share the rubric ahead of time. Monitor the groups as they work, eavesdropping on their discussions and observing their interactions (this can be a formative assessment). Cooperative learning models emphasize the importance of both group work and individual accountability. You could have the group create some parts of a report together (perhaps in their notebooks or with a class Wiki or GoogleDoc page) and then have each student write an individual conclusion or summary. Some teachers hold each student responsible for one part of a project, evaluating the components separately and then assigning a holistic evaluation for the entire project.
Working with 700+ students in a lab setting is a challenge. In addition to your cooperative groups, there are other ways you can organize activities and materials to preserve your sanity:
Establish communications with the homeroom teachers (assuming they also teach science lessons) to help students make connections between the lab and classroom activities. A quick glance at a few science notebooks would let you know what the students have been doing since their last visit to your lab. And the homeroom teacher can see what projects the students are doing with you. Perhaps one role would be class secretary—a student responsible for bringing the notebooks to the lab and updating you on their other science-related activities.
Photograph: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kasimetcalfe/118471837/
I teach fourth and fifth graders in our school’s “Discovery Lab.” With over 700 students I am constantly brainstorming procedures to help the lab run smoother. One thing that I want to try is to assign student roles for group work. Do you have suggestions for these roles or any other information that might be helpful?
—Melody, Grenada, Mississippi
By Debra Shapiro
Posted on 2010-06-23
Have you ever taken your students to STEM education events at an amusement park? We’re working on a story about theme parks where students can learn while having fun, such as Ohio’s Kings Island, which holds Math and Science Days every spring. We invite you to share your experiences at these parks by leaving a comment here. We might include some comments in the story, which will be published in July.
By Mary Bigelow
Posted on 2010-06-22
In SciLinks, as the webwatchers review new sites, each site is correlated to a specific keyword (such as Food Chains, Phases of the Moon, or Magnetic Fields). But sometimes, we run into collections of activities that include a broad spectrum of science-related topics. Although many of the individual activities are aligned with specific SciLinks keywords and are included in the database, the entire collection may be of interest.
These are not simply a list of someone’s favorite sites or activities. These are activities, simulations, and resources created by organizations or institutions as part of an outreach program or related to their projects and research. You can search the sites by grade level and subject area. Here are some examples of these collections:
From the Teachers’ Domain site you can access hundreds of individual multimedia resources (video clips, photographs, audio files, animations, PDF documents) from WGBH/PBS programming. Most of these resources have a generous use policy. All of them can be used online, most can be downloaded, and many can be shared or added to your own presentations. The site also has a set of K–12 lesson plans that integrate these resources.
The Molecular Workbench has many interactive simulations and includes topics in science and engineering. Use the “Software” link to download the software and get a list of available simulations. The “Curriculum” link leads to a database of lesson plans that use the simulation. The lesson plans include objectives, key concepts, and correlations to popular textbook chapters.
Use the Vision Learning Library to find modules on a variety of topics in biology, chemistry, physics, and science processes. Each module, written by an expert, includes text, graphics, animations, and a quiz. You can register (free) to create your own classroom space on the site. The library is also available in Spanish.
Explore has on-line exhibits, lesson plans, and information from the Exploratorium Museum. There are activities for students of all ages and resources for classroom implementation.
Cool Science from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has virtual labs, videos, and “BioInteractives” with in-depth investigations and information.
With Smithsonian Educators you can search the collections of the “nation’s attic” for resources and lessons. You can even enter one of your state standards and get resources related to it.
You can search the index of PhET simulations by science content area or by grade level. Each animated simulation has teaching ideas and could be used by individuals or small groups or projected to a whole class.
If your students are interested in photography, here are themed galleries of high-quality pictures and tips for taking digital photographs from National Geographic Photography.
Paso Partners: Integrating Mathematics, Science, and Language includes lessons can be used in classes with young English language learners in grades K–3. The topics include life science, health, earth science, and physical science. The resources are available in both English and Spanish and include vocabulary lists, graphic organizers, activities, and assessment ideas.
NIH Curriculum Supplements for high school, middle school, and elementary grades are lessons and activities that help students understand the science behind health topics such as bioethics, genetics, and the brain.
In SciLinks, as the webwatchers review new sites, each site is correlated to a specific keyword (such as Food Chains, Phases of the Moon, or Magnetic Fields). But sometimes, we run into collections of activities that include a broad spectrum of science-related topics.