Long after a hurricane passes over and through any region or coastal area, the memories of it often linger. There may be visual reminders of the storm and the day lives may have been changed, or lost, forever. Hurricanes can be long-lived storms. They can also be structurally large, so their impact can cover enormous swaths of land and water, often with large populations in the way, particularly coastal areas. Hurricanes are the only officially named natural disasters, as well as the only hazards whose names can be retired. This unique characteristic provided us an opportunity to develop an activity that allows students to gain a greater understanding and appreciation into the: a) climatology of hurricanes, b) change over time with respect to naming and their frequency, and c) socio-scientific impact of the storms. In this activity students make sense of various data by analyzing, comparing and contrasting, and thinking critically about the various patterns that emerge, enhancing scientific literacy as well as gaining an appreciation for the phenomenon and the research around tropical systems.

The vision behind the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is that all students engage in explaining phenomena and designing solutions with three-dimensional learning. Authentic sensemaking involves opportunities for learners to share, analyze, and critique ideas in collaborative groups. However, it can be challenging to structure classroom discourse so that all students actively participate. This article outlines the success of two teachers using Group Learning Routines (GLR), or peer-to-peer discussion protocols, to support diverse learners. The routines are embedded in the New Visions for Public Schools Biology Curriculum which is open source and storyline-based. The unit described here engages students in an exploration of the mismatch between how our bodies and our environments function. Embedded routines structure student talk throughout a learning sequence culminating in class consensus discussion, in which students collaboratively decide on a class-wide explanation of the phenomenon. Resources, such as rubrics, descriptions of the routines, and example student work are provided to support classroom implementation.

This lesson allows students to engage in sense-making through the cross-cutting analysis of the form and function of pollen, carried by pollinators. Students observe the microscopic features of pollen and how insects transport these fine, but critical grains of life. Students initiate sense making of pollen and pollinators by collecting evidence of their complementary forms and functions. By creating working prototypes of pollinators and the pollen they transport, students reason the importance of nature’s complementary engineering design. Students understand that in creating working prototypes, the most efficient designs are those that mimic nature (biomimicry). Pollen needs specifically shaped structures to be carried by pollinators. Native bees are specifically engineered to carry maximum amounts of pollen, and students should be conscious of our dependency on bees to pollinate many of our food sources. Using the 6-E model allows students to engage with nature, explore with their hands, engineer a bee prototype, and develop cognitive skills as they reason through the design process.

Two modules were designed for high school science students to investigate the performance of a rain garden installed on school property. The rain garden, a green infrastructure system which allows soil infiltration, was installed to reduce impacts to urban streams and can increase the community’s resilience to flooding. Scientists actively conducting research at the rain garden involved students in assessing the rain garden's performance, where students learned new technical skills, gained varied experiences in collecting and analyzing data, were exposed to new STEM careers, and learned about local issues that impact their community. In the first module, students conducted a land survey and calculated the volumetric capacity of the rain garden. In the second module, students collected rainfall data using rain gauges and analyzed various aspects of rainfall collection. Although these modules were focused on a rain garden already installed on school property and were done in conjunction with ongoing scientific research, they can be implemented at schools without this mitigation strategy present and without official research being conducted. The surveying module can easily be applied to measure any land surface feature, and the rain gauge module can be implemented anywhere as it is focused on rainfall collection.

 

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Student roles can promote collaboration and individual accountability in groups during engineering design challenges. However, student disengagement may occur if students do not perceive value in their roles. We introduce four distinct roles—quality inspector, market researcher, advertiser, and coordinator. These roles introduce meaningful tasks that contribute to addressing engineering design challenges in group settings and offer differentiated opportunities to address the science and engineering practices. The quality inspector conducts peer reviews of designs from different groups. The market researcher collects and analyzes consumer feedback for product improvement. The advertiser creates engaging illustrations of their work for consumers through media like flyers, reports, or videos. The coordinator organizes, supports, and facilitates their group members and acts as a liaison between teammates and the teacher. The teacher facilitates, supports, models, and guides students in their new responsibilities. Collectively, each student role presents opportunities for meaningful collaboration toward product innovation by emphasizing the importance of each role in achieving the design goal.

Getting ALL students involved in a class can be a difficult task. Getting students EXCITED about reading, writing, and learning can be an even MORE difficult task. Fortunately, the use of Dialogues is an easy strategy that any teacher can implement in any grade and in any subject area to get students up, moving, and actively engaged in the learning process. Dialogues are essentially two-person plays or skits that students act out in pairs. Each dialogue focuses on a specific topic and introduces key vocabulary terms and concepts in a way that students can understand, using day-to-day conversational language. In addition, all students love using Dialogues because they appeal to a wide variety of interests. The "science-y" students love the content, the lit/drama students love the format, and the class comics love the humor! AND they can be personalized and modified to meet the needs of specific students, and educational goals and can be used with other strategies such as exit slips, labs, content review, and more. In short, Dialogues are an easy way to create an inclusive classroom where every student is engaged and successful.

Climate Change

Scope on the Skies column

This manuscript reports on the impact of using collaborative digital summary tables on student engagement and learning. First, traditional summary tables were used during two units in 7th grade life science, then more scaffolded digital collaborative summary tables were used during three additional units. Three-part summative assessment scores were averaged at the end of each unit to analyze the impact on student learning. Compared to traditional summary tables, collaborative digital summary tables increase scaffolding, reflection, and collaboration. This article explains how they function in the classroom to increase learning. The efficacy of collaborative summary tables is shown in improved student scores, especially for students in minority groups. Using summary tables in the classroom has benefits for student engagement and learning, and the achievement gap in the classroom narrows over each unit. The benefits of reflection, scaffolding, and disaggregated instruction in science are also discussed as ways to support student learning and engagement. Overall, collaborative digital summary tables have a powerful impact on student learning and are a useful tool for teachers to increase engagement and academic success in the classroom.

Integrating literacy practices in science classrooms can help students with reading complex scientific text, write arguments as part of shared cross-disciplinary practices and engage with content. In the Linking Science, Mathematics, and Literacy for All Learners program, middle school science, mathematics, ELA, and special education teachers have been implementing multimodal STEM text sets that include a range of texts and scaffolds that support instruction and students’ content learning. One of these strategies combines reading and writing in unique and creative ways: Poetry Writing! Black-out and Found poems are accessible approaches to help students focus on key words and ideas in a complex text, pull out those words to work with them, and then reconstruct them into a poem. This approach can be used in a variety of ways, and in some of the examples provided, students include an altered page from a scientific article on which students find their words, black-out the rest of the text, and then illustrate the entire document to help show their message.