With all of the curricular demands and a focus on preparing for state exams, I am concerned that we do not create situations for students to persevere if they don’t succeed in their first attempts at experiments in science. How do we communicate the value of curiosity and perseverance to high school science students and the notion that repeated “failure” is common on the road to major breakthroughs?
—Noelle, New York, New York
When watching children play video games or teenagers texting at the speed of light, I marvel at how they learned these skills on their own–through trial and error, practice, watching each other, and self-evaluation. You raise a good question: Are students encouraged to use these learning strategies in school?
Students hear failure and mistakes are not an option, with airline pilots and brain surgeons as examples. While I hope pilots and surgeons would not make errors in the cockpit and operating room, I suspect they did make some errors during simulations and supervised training—under controlled circumstances where they see the results of their decisions in a variety of situations. This training provides opportunities to learn how to recognize when things go wrong and to experience many problem-solving and decision-making situations, so they’ll remain calm and collected when things go haywire in real life, as they inevitably do. .
What happens when students make mistakes or when something does not go well the first time? I suspect some teachers use the red pencil to focus on the mistakes and take points off, even when students are learning and practicing new concepts and skills. Do students learn that mistakes are bad in school, perfection is required at all times, and there are no second chances? Perhaps some students are so afraid of being labeled a “failure” they’ve learned it’s less painful to do nothing. It could be helpful if we model how to recognize a mistake or error and what to do about it. Even if we have to make a deliberate error, we can demonstrate how it could be corrected and prevented and what can be learned from it. We could even describe our own attempts at learning something new. (I told my students that if they ever felt frustrated to visualize me in my first aerobics class—what a disaster!)
We should not condone sloppy or careless work, but I wonder if sometimes it would be helpful to allow students to make mistakes. Shouldn’t we encourage them to reflect, ponder, and problem-solve before asking for help? Just as “helicopter parents” hover over their children to prevent mistakes or failure, I think well-intentioned “helicopter teachers” hover over their students and intervene even if students do not ask for (and may not really need) immediate assistance, just a little time to think things through. Of course, teachers must intervene if there are safety issues or when students are genuinely frustrated.
Can we help students learn perseverance if science activities are neatly packaged in one-period chunks rather than opportunities for ongoing investigations? What do students learn about the nature of science if all activities have a single, correct answer or conclusion? It would be helpful for students and teachers to meet scientists (either in person or online) and learn about their day-to-day work. A museum scientist described to my students how his longitudinal research on amphibian populations was taking several years (it was interspersed with other projects). He noted how he revised the project several times and how some data did not seem to “fit,” which led to other research questions.
It’s not necessary to wait until high school to encourage perseverance and curiosity. In a fourth grade class I visited, students were investigating the relationship between volume and temperature. They had made predictions/hypotheses, but as the teacher put their data on the board, it was apparent that they were too varied to see any trends and come to any conclusion. As the teacher tried to think of an explanation, a student remarked, “Maybe we didn’t all do the experiment in the same way.” Other students chimed in with suggestions: they may have read the thermometers incorrectly, perhaps they did not all measure the balloons accurately, or maybe the balloons had tiny holes in them that allowed air to escape. The teacher then joined the discussion about the importance of controls in an experiment and the value of consistency and accuracy in measurement. When the students asked if they could repeat the experiment, she helped them annotate the procedure with their suggestions and promised they could try again. After class, she reflected on the lesson. She said that at first she was disappointed the activity did not work out as planned, but she was excited about the way the students responded. She concluded that learning from a “failed” experiment was a valuable experience. (And later in the year, her class scored well above average on the state science exam!)
A recent blog entry Student Success: Genius or Perseverance? on the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) web site also addresses this topic. Readers, feel free to share your own experiences or other resources, too.

I received a “tweet” from NSTA yesterday – the new version of SciLinks is operational! If you’ve been a longtime user of SciLinks, you’ll notice the new look right away. It’s more visually appealing but the basic functions are there.
After logging in, you still have the option of searching by a textbook code or keyword. You can save the search for future reference, and you can also start a list of favorite websites for your lesson planning or to share with students. When you try some of the functions, you’ll get a note that more features (such as the class roster) are in the works. But I’m glad that the basic functions are available as we get ready for the new school year. If you’re a novice to SciLinks, there are several ways you can use the results of your search.
Recommending sites to students. As a teacher, you can provide logins for students to look at particular sites, or you can give them a printed list of suggestions. For interested students, you might go to the next grade level or you could go down a level for students who may struggle with the text. Share a login with the librarian so that he/she can remind students of this resource. In my town, many students use the technology at the local public library. Perhaps the staff there could be alerted to how and why students would access this.
In large group settings. Why just talk about science topics when there are many sites that lend themselves to illustrating the concepts? Building bridges, watching volcanoes erupt, seeing animals congregate around a water hole at night, or accessing photographs and video of various topics bring these topics to life. If you’re fortunate enough to have a smart board or projection unit, using a simulation or video clip with the class or a small group of students could be an engaging experience for them – and the resources are free and ready when you are. Print out or save some of the pages of a site to supplement or update the textbook information.
Teacher learning. One thing I’ve enjoyed over the years is using SciLinks to keep current on topics such as the human genome and climate change. I especially love the earth science topics (I taught life and physical science, so I’m continuing to learn). If you’re unfamiliar with a topic, searching for sites geared to middle or high school students would be a quick and painless way to learn more about it.

Digital photography changed the way I do science with my students. I reflect more on what has happened and what is being left out as I look over the photos, in moments after school, at home on the computer. I have this luxury as a parent of older children who are themselves busy on the computer, and because I do some of my work at home.

Not every program has time or resources to use digital photography to document the science learning going on in their classes, but the children’s own work also reveals the learning taking place. Anytime children record their thinking with drawings, such as drawing an object they think will sink and an object they think will float (before trying to find out or drawing what happened after), they are documenting their science process skills. When recording observations, children make a record they can refer back to. In one classroom children drew the caterpillars as they grew, comparing them to a unit cube (which didn’t grow!). Over the week the growth was noticeable because they had their earliest drawings for comparison.
Have a few clipboards with paper and marker attached for children to carry to where the science is happening—in the block area children are discovering the need for a wide base, in the water table children are noticing the shape of drops, in the housekeeping area children are talking about how their family cooks, and in the book nook children are remembering a butterfly they saw outside that was different from the one in the book. Ask them, “Can you show me with a drawing? “Would you like me to write down your words?”
Peggy

It’s hard to believe that in a short time, the students will be back in school, ready to start a new year. In the August 2009 edition of NSTA’s Science Class electronic newsletter, there were lots of suggestions for new (and not-so-new) teachers, including web-based resources such as 100 Helpful Websites for New Teachers. There are many good websites here on topics such as technology applications, ideas for classroom activities, and downloadable documents. I suspect that a new teacher might be overwhelmed at first by all of these resources, so I would also suggest “One Essential Website for New Teachers” — the NSTA website with a treasure chest of resources specifically for science:

Many of the resources on the NSTA site require an NSTA membership. New teachers can join at a reduced rate (see the NSTA website for the guidelines). Membership would also give the teacher access to SciLinks to find related websites to supplement or enhance their instruction (and keep your eyes open for the updates to the site this month!).
So perhaps a membership would make a great welcome gift for a new science teacher in your school!

I was excited to see a Monarch butterfly land on the Butterfly Bush in the yard (I hesitate to call it a garden).

Does that mean that the Milkweed plant may yet become a home to Monarch caterpillars? I haven’t seen any eggs but there is still time. Maybe another insect has already staked a claim to the Milkweed, making it unattractive to butterflies. Monarch butterfly migration is the subject of a citizen science project called Monarch Watch, which encourages the creation of “Monarch Waystations”, plantings of caterpillar food (milkweeds) and nectar sources for the adult butterflies. This is a project your class could initiate in the spring after studying the butterfly life cycle.
Read more about butterflies and how they are the same and different from moths in What’s the Difference Between a Butterfly and a Moth? by Robin Koontz with informative illustrations by Brandelin-Dacey (Picture Window Books, 2010).  Both are in the group Lepidoptera and your children will love to become Lepidopterists, butterfly and moth scientists. Butterfly information is also available online from California to Florida. See the Educators’ Guide: Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History for answers to questions such as “How do Lepidoptera see, taste and hear?”
Citizen science projects are one way to connect your class with habitats other than your local one, and to broaden their knowledge of the world while helping them understand that sometimes science is a collection of data collected over time by many individuals. Here are some activity ideas that may inspire you to participate with your class, and join with others in a network to provide data that can be used by other classes and scientists.
In the Square of Life project, students plot square meters in their school yards and record all the living and non-living things they find in the square. They compare the information with what other classes have found by looking at the information posted on the website. View student reports to see how your class can learn by participating in the project which was developed by Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) and Bank Street College of Education .
In Bucket Buddies, another CIESE project,  students collect samples from ponds to answer the question: Are the organisms found in pond water the same all over the world?  Then they compare their data with that from other classes and look for patterns.
Participating in Firefly Watch means observing and recording the presence or absence of fireflies in your area. Read about “How These Beetles Create Light” and what scientists know in David Farenthold’s article in the Washington Post.
On one recent morning with the unseasonable summer temperature of 64°F, I saw a bumble bee resting on a purple cone flower, perhaps waiting for the sun to warm it up. I was tempted to pet it! If you are in Illinois and your students are interested in taking photos of bees, learn about Beespotters, another project where citizen scientists lend a hand.   One beespotter’s photo showed a rusty-patched bumble bee, Bombus affinis, a bee that was thought to be locally extinct!
Learning about the lives of insects can expand our students’ world.
Peggy