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Teacher's Toolkit

Kids Teaching Kids

Using summary boards to demonstrate learning through scientific communication

Science Scope—January 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 5)

By Laura Riley and Kim Healy

Kids Teaching Kids

 

Teacher's Toolkit

Science Throwdown

Rapping up the content

Science Scope—January 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 5)

By Brian Heisey

 

Citizen Science

Sourdough Citizen Science

Science Scope—January 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 5)

By Jill Nugent

Sourdough Citizen Science

 

Science for All

Modifying labs for students with special needs

Science Scope—January 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 5)

By Kaitlyn McGlynn and Janey Kelly

 

Ask a Mentor

Mole Hills Out of Mountains

By Gabe Kraljevic

Posted on 2020-03-13

I would like to find some time-efficient way to have students share their learning or their observations with me (individually) without having to take in two classes of science notebooks.
—J., Ohio

“School should not be a place where young people go to watch old people work.”
—Cris Tovani

You are not required to correct and grade everything a student does. Giving formative feedback is necessary, but you can reduce the workload while not diminishing students’ learning.

Assign written work on exactly what you want students to have learned. Whether you ask them to make observations, draw conclusions, or reflect on their learning, you will get what you need without having to read entire notebooks.

Mark notebooks only periodically. Students can even self-assess their work using a rubric that you supply. My teaching was revolutionized many years ago by an online rubric maker (http://rubistar.4teachers.org) which allowed me to better manage notebook assessments among other activities.

Peer assessment is an excellent learning strategy that also reduces your work. Analyzing and discussing their classmates’ work can be a powerful learning experience for students. Consider incorporating peer feedback into almost everything your students are doing. This can be done in pairs or in groups, but you will need to spend some time teaching them how to do these assessments. Small, colored slips with guiding questions are very useful and can be attached to reviewed pages. These colored papers are easy to thumb to in a notebook for quick checks.

Hope this helps!

Photo credit: Niklas Bildhauer via Flickr

I would like to find some time-efficient way to have students share their learning or their observations with me (individually) without having to take in two classes of science notebooks.
—J., Ohio

“School should not be a place where young people go to watch old people work.”
—Cris Tovani

 

Right to the Source

Evaluating Advertising Claims Past and Present

The Science Teacher—January 2020 (Volume 87, Issue 5)

By Michael Apfeldorf

 

Career of the Month

Technology Executive Annie Chang

The Science Teacher—January 2020 (Volume 87, Issue 5)

By Luba Vangelova

Technology Executive Annie Chang

 

Investigating Land Ethics

Exploring land usage through historical case studies and a student symposium

The Science Teacher—January 2020 (Volume 87, Issue 5)

By Jaron Boerner-Mercier and Ron Gray

Investigating Land Ethics

 

Getting Messy with Data

Tools and strategies to help students analyze and interpret complex data sources

The Science Teacher—January 2020 (Volume 87, Issue 5)

By Joshua Rosenberg, Alex Edwards, and Bodong Chen

Getting Messy with Data

 

Disequilibrium

Learning by (seeing) osmosis

Science Scope—February 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 6)

By Cole Entress

Learning by (seeing) osmosis

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