Anatomy: The subject tend to make teachers freeze up, or make the obligatory “gross” puns. But it’s a great topic for STEM, and a career field more students need to know about.

The NSTA staff had a chance to sit down at the 2016 STEM Forum and Expo with Shawn Boynes (SB), Executive Director of the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), and Lisa Lee (LL), Associate Professor  at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, to learn a little more.

Q. What does an anatomy career look like?

A. Anatomy is the core competency for any career in health care. But it’s not just gross anatomy—there are so many branches like histology, neurology, embryology. Career pathways could take students into pathology labs, the field as an anthropologist, a classroom as a biology teacher, the coroner’s office. —LL

Q. What could a K-12 teacher do to encourage more students to go into anatomy?

A. We have members in almost every medical and dental school in the United States, and they work on outreach. Teachers could contact us to find an anatomist who could set up a demonstration or program for them. Going through AAA makes it much easier to develop this type of relationship; you don’t want to just call a med school and ask the receptionist to send a skeleton to your school! —SB

Q. That sounds great for older students, but what about teachers of really young children? Many teachers of that age group don’t have a science background.

A. It doesn’t have to be intimidating. That’s one of our goals is to dispel that notion. A preschool teacher could start with simply getting students familiar with their own bodies. Ask questions like: What are these hard things in here? What’s the squishy part in the middle? What’s this leathery stuff on the outside? And read books about the body with them! —LL

Q. Dissection. It’s a difficult subject for some.

A. There are some stand-ins for biological specimens, but you certainly can’t be a doctor without having dissected an actual human body. But there are some good companies out there, making virtual dissection software, specimens in clay, and so forth. For K-12 students, these alternatives allow students to become familiar with anatomy. —SB

A. At med schools, there is a tremendous respect for cadavers. When we have finished learning from each one, we hold a memorial service and all students and teachers who have been honored to work with it take part, and the family members are invited. The families always come, and it’s very moving. —LL

Q. What do you hope to get out of the STEM Forum and Expo?

A. We are here to learn. We’re in an exploratory phase, for AAA, looking for ways we can reach out to K-12 STEM educators. To learn how we can get student into the anatomy career pipeline earlier, make anatomy more accessible as a subject they can teach. —SB

Q. What else should STEM teachers know about your association?

A. We want to encourage more students to get into the anatomy profession, and we have great programs for preservice anatomy students. Find them all here: Student, Postdoc and Young Faculty Competition Award Winners. We have a strong commitment to bringing younger members into the profession, and in fact we have two Board of Director positions specifically for student members so that they can bring new ideas and help us address their particular challenges. Learn more about us at http://www.anatomy.org/. —SB

Q. Any skeletons in your closets?

A. Yes! I’m a collector, and they come in really handy at Halloween. —LL

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2016 Area Conferences

• Minneapolis, October 27–29
• Portland, November 10–12
• Columbus, December 1–3

2017 National Conference

• Los Angeles, March 30–April 2

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Poverty is a student health problem, according to the 64,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP; 2016a).

Poverty affects learning.

The AAP announced earlier this year that at all checkups, pediatricians should ask parents and guardians: “Do you have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month?” This question helps identify the one in five U.S. children who are living in poverty, or an income level at or below $24,230 for a family of four, according to 2015 U.S. Census Bureau data (2016). The number of poor children younger than 18 rises to 43%, or 31.5 million, when families designated as “poor,” “near poor,” and “low-income” are included in census data, according to the AAP (2016a).

“Research shows that living in deep and persistent poverty can cause severe, lifelong health problems, including … poor language development, higher rates of asthma, and obesity. A growing body of research links child poverty with toxic stress that can alter gene expression and brain function and contributes to chronic cardiovascular, immune, and psychiatric disorders, as well as behavioral difficulties” (AAP 2016a).

“While urban and rural areas continue to have high rates of poverty, the suburbs have experienced the largest and fastest increases in poverty since the 2008 recession,” the AAP says. “Poverty is everywhere. It affects children of all backgrounds and in all communities,” says AAP president Benard P. Dreyer (AAP 2016a).

Moreover, the consequences of poverty can limit educational achievement, the AAP says (2016b). Irwin Redlener, a professor of pediatrics at Columbia University, also wrote about the role poverty plays in education achievement in an Education Week commentary:

“Kids are sleeping at their desks after being up all night wheezing with untreated asthma. They are failing tests because they don’t have the glasses they need to read a lesson on the blackboard. They are being held back a grade because they can’t hear the teacher. They are acting out because they are traumatized by extreme stress in their home. These are the health burdens of poverty that weigh on children in classrooms every day” (Redlener 2014).

One study found that half of parents of uninsured children were unaware that their children were eligible for government health insurance. The study of 267 uninsured children in Texas found that 38% had health problems, 66% had special healthcare needs, and 64% had no primary care provider, although their parents or guardians were eligible for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Flores et al. 2015).

“High school science teachers who believe poverty may be affecting their students’ health can talk with the principal, school nurse, or school counselor,” says Dr. Mary Lou Gavin, senior medical editor for KidsHealth.org. “Make sure low-income students are benefiting from school services, such as counseling and free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches. Educators also can refer families to local, state, and federal resources that offer help with food, housing, heat, clothes, and health insurance.”

Michael E. Bratsis is senior editor for Kids Health in the Classroom. E-mail him with comments, questions, or suggestions.

On the web
For students:
Coping with stress articles, in English and Spanish: http://bit.ly/1T79DIf
For educators:
Poverty in schools: http://edut.to/1Mrni7P
At-Risk School Success Stories: http://bit.ly/1RWIFE5
How Being Poor Makes You Sick: http://theatln.tc/1vGeoxh
School breakfast, school lunch, and supplemental nutrition assistance programs: http://1.usa.gov/1AGZ71S, http://1.usa.gov/N9l7Oj, http://1.usa.gov/1gLikau

References
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). 2016a. American Academy of Pediatrics recommends pediatricians screen for poverty at check-ups and help eliminate its toxic health effects. http://bit.ly/1p8ykcP

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). 2016b. Poverty and child health in the United States. http://bit.ly/1RTcWiY

Flores, G., L. Hua, C. Walker, M. Lee, A. Portillo, M. Henry, M. Fierro, and K. Massey. 2016. A cross-sectional study of parental awareness of and reasons for lack of health insurance among minority children, and the impact on health, access to care, and unmet needs. International Journal for Equity in Health 15 (44). http://bit.ly/1Zps9y0

Redlener, I. Education Week. 2014. A Healthy Child Is a Better Student. August 5. http://bit.ly/XpBJqu

U.S. Census Bureau. 2016. Poverty. http://1.usa.gov/1z7zD9Z

Editor’s Note

This article was originally published in the Summer 2016 issue of The Science Teacher journal from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

Get Involved With NSTA!

Join NSTA today and receive The Science Teacher, the peer-reviewed journal just for high school teachers; to write for the journal, see our Author Guidelines and Call for Papers; connect on the high school level science teaching list (members can sign up on the list server); or consider joining your peers at future NSTA conferences.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2016 Area Conferences

• Minneapolis, October 27–29
• Portland, November 10–12
• Columbus, December 1–3

2017 Nati
onal Conference

• Los Angeles, March 30–April 2

Follow NSTA

It is so fascinating how obvious it is that children have different prior experiences, different developmental ages, and different interests when we teachers present them with a set of materials and don’t ask them to use them in a particular way! This post is a reflection on how two different sets of objects are used by preschool children ages 3-5 years. The experiences I describe are just the beginning of explorations into the relationship between “contents” and “containers,” and the way 2-D materials can represent 3-D structures.

Contents and containers

I had the pleasure of working with two classrooms on building with a variety of materials, a class of young-to-old three-year-olds and a mixed age classroom of just-four-year-olds to older five-year-olds. We teachers provided a set of “contents and containers” to both classes, inspired by presentations by Dr. Rosemary Geiken and Dr. Jill Uhlenberg (Geiken 2009).

The contents we used were balls of different sizes, film canisters, cotton balls, and lids from various jars and bottles. The containers were made-for-food-storage plastic tubs, recyclable oatmeal/coffee canisters and cans, plastic netting from fruit, plastic cups, and sections of drainage tubes. I chose these objects because they were easy to access and could fit together in more than one way. Our purpose was to observe the children to understand more about what interests them and their approach to new materials.

In both classrooms there was a variety of approaches: some children collected as many of the “contents” as they were able to, many explored the way the contents fit into the various containers and how the containers could open and close, some tried making a system to move the contents into and between the containers, and others used the objects to make sounds or as part of imaginative play. They encountered problems to struggle with and sometimes solve: there wasn’t enough room in the container for all the collected contents, an object got stuck inside a container, two containers got stuck together, and there weren’t enough of the coveted objects to satisfy all who wanted them.

We could see which children needed support to persist, and were able to use open-ended prompts (statements from teachers) to support children in trying alternative solutions. Over the weeks of using the materials the children began using them with other classroom materials, finding new purposes for both contents and containers, and new problems to solve. Beginning with a set of materials that could be used in many ways allowed us to really see what developed, because we didn’t have an expectation of how the children should use them. The play that sprang forth reminded me of the play that happens in workshops by Dr. Walter Drew (see video examples) and his work with co-authors Dr. Marcia Nell and Dr. Baji Rankin.

Using 2-D shapes to represent 3-D structures

When we do ask children to use materials in a particular way, their different prior experiences, different developmental ages, and different interests also become apparent. We can use this information to guide our lesson planning and discussions about children’s work.

A teacher shared her previous experience of making the 3-D unit block shape cross-sections in the medium of 2-D art foam with magnetic backing to be used on a radiator or white board. We made a set based on the blocks available in the classrooms and asked children to build with a small set of blocks and then represent their structure using the 2-D art foam blocks. We hope that children will later use the foam blocks to represent the 3-D structures they want to save and reflect on after the 3-D blocks are put away.

This was a new material for most of the children so we expected them to be mostly interested in using the art foam block shapes. A few children in both age groups created small wooden unit block shapes and then used the 2-D art foam shapes to represent the structure.

They looked back and forth between their unit block structure and their art foam block representation on the wall. A child who was trying to make a symmetrical structure with a triangle block on either side of a central rectangular block was frustrated by the lack of triangle blocks that faced both ways. It quickly became apparent that I had only made “right-handed” triangle blocks, sticking the magnetic backing to the triangles when they were all facing the same way! Luckily I had additional material and could correct this omission. But the situation allowed us to assess that the child was very aware of the direction of her triangle block.

Some children began building a long “train” of the 2-D art foam blocks and others wanted to see how many of the art foam blocks it took to cover a set of unit blocks lying on the floor. The idea of representing a 3-D block structure may become important another day if they want to save a particular structure to use the following day but space requirements don’t allow structures to stay up during nap time. A 2-D representation can help children remember what blocks they used so they can recreate the structure and perhaps redesign it. 

It will be interesting to see if using the 2-D foam block shapes has any influence on whether childr
en choose to draw their 3-D wooden block structures on paper, and how easy it is for them to document and represent their structures in yet another medium.

Geiken, R., Uhlenberg, J., Uhlenberg, D, & York, C. (November 2009). Toddlers engaged in inquiry and problem solving: Promoting learning in science and math with spheres and cylinders. National Association for the Education of Young Children National Conference, Washington, DC Conference session

Drew, Walter F. and Baji Rankin. 2004. Promoting Creativity for Life Using Open-Ended Materials. Young Children July 2004

Nell, Marcia L., and Walter F. Drew, With Deborah E. Bush. 2013. From Play to Practice: Connecting Teachers’ Play to Children’s Learning. NAEYC 

Working with and reading about the work of other educators is inspiring. While observing or mentoring in different programs I am given an education and opportunity to reflect on my own practice.

The teachers in the Clarendon Child Care Center had been closely observing children’s block play and discussing it. The director introduced the Thinking Lens tool from Margie Carter and Deb Curtis’s The Visionary Director: A Handbook for Dreaming, Organizing, and Improvising in Your Center (Redleaf, 2009), and shared resources on fostering reflection and analysis. (See additional resources in TYC, and a single page resource from the ChildCareExchange.) The staff had also been reading about the use of blocks in The Block Book edited by Elisabeth S. Hirsch (NAEYC 1996) and about the early invention of wooden unit blocks and work on children’s play by Caroline Pratt. 

(You can learn more about Pratt’s work in the article, “Learning From Caroline Pratt” by Petra Munro of Hendry Louisiana State University, discussing Caroline Pratt’s life and work through a review of Mary Hauser’s Learning from Children: The Life and Legacy of Caroline Pratt in the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum, Volume 4 February 2008.)

The staff synthesized their discussion and created a poster, based on the example by Charlotte Brody in The Block Book, to share with families: filling in their goals for using blocks and what children get out of block play, guided by the understanding they gained from reading Hirsch’s and Pratt’s work. Their work displayed in the poster was a powerful reminder to me to take children’s block play seriously while maintaining the joyful experience.

Some of my “visits” to other programs are through the shared internet. Mr. Peter of Mr. Noah’s Nursery School writes about his class’ experience of block play in “The Bliss of Blocks” on the blog, Gopher Ark – the art of early education.

What are your “ah ha!” moments of observing and fostering block play in your early childhood program?

Do your middle school or high school students have trouble comprehending scientific reading? If you answered yes, we’ve got just the book for you! Here’s another question: Are you ready to have some fun in your classroom? Yes, again? Well, Once Upon an Earth Science Book is hot off the press. This new book by Jodi Wheeler-Toppen includes 12 interdisciplinary activities designed to create confident readers.

Once Upon an Earth Science Book is designed for middle and high school Earth science teachers and supports the Next Generation Science Standards and the reading and writing portions of the Common Core State Standards.

Each lesson includes a specific reading comprehension strategy that teachers can introduce. Then, working in groups, students can read a passage, fill in gaps in prior knowledge, and model reading strategies for one another. Next, students engage with sense-making activities like writing prompts, journal entries and other assignments. The book includes ideas for assessments as well.

Reading topics include glaciers, ocean garbage patches, hurricanes, the solar system, seasons, energy, geological dating, mountains, plate tectonics, and more.

One exercise has students reading an article called “On the Tracks of a Dinosaur” and pairing it with a hands-on activity. Students will be told that they have been called in to interpret a new dinosaur trackway that has been found along a local river. Using reading exercises, observations, measurements, and discussions, students will formulate a hypothesis about what could make the stride length increase along the trackway. This lesson includes several activities designed to get students reading, thinking, and using their imagination.

The book has everything needed to build a well-thought out lesson that will interest, entertain, and teach students.

Check out the sample chapter “Continents on the Move.” In this chapter, students will learn about Alfred Wegener’s supporting evidence for the concept of continental drift.

This book is also available as an e-book.

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Building an Understanding of Physical Principles

Figure 1. Burl and Paul on a scaffold.

Before college, I worked with master sign painter Burl Grey, who, like me, was passionate about science but didn’t study physics in high school. One day Burl asked which of the two ropes holding up our sign-painting scaffold (Figure 1) experienced more of the “stretching force” called tension. Burl twanged the rope near his end of the scaffold—like a guitar string—and I did the same with mine. Burl, who was heavier than me, reasoned that his rope should have more tension because it supported more weight. Hearing his rope twang at a higher pitch than mine reasonably confirmed that his rope experienced more tension.

Figure 2. Paul in middle of scaffold.

Would it affect the tensions, we wondered, if I walked to the middle of the scaffold, toward Burl (Figure 2)? Burl’s rope would support more weight and have greater tension, we reasoned, and tension in my rope should decrease accordingly. To exaggerate the point, if we both stood together at one extreme end of the scaffold and leaned outward, the opposite end of the scaffold should rise like a seesaw, its rope going limp with no tension at all (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Burl and Paul at left end, with the right end raised and the rope limp.

We agreed that my rope’s tension would decrease as I walked toward Burl—but would the decrease be compensated—exactly—by increased tension in Burl’s rope? If so, how would one rope “know” about changes in the other rope? The answer was beyond our understanding. I learned it only after leaving my sign-painting career for prep school, college, and graduate studies that immersed me in the world of physics.

The equilibrium rule
In my first physics class, I learned that things at rest, such as that scaffold, are in mechanical equilibrium. That is, all forces that act on it balance to zero. In mathematical notation, the equilibrium rule is ∑F = 0, with ∑ standing for “the sum of” and F for the forces that act on the object. In the case of Burl and me, our weights were 140 and 110 pounds, respectively (we didn’t talk newtons or kilograms back then). The weight of the scaffold was about 100 pounds. If we call the tensions in the ropes positive in direction (upward) and the weights negative (downward), then

∑F = Tension₁ + Tension₂
– 140 pounds – 110 pounds
– 100 pounds = 0.

Combining the weights of Burl, me, and the scaffold,

Tension₁ + Tension₂
– 350 pounds = 0.

Solving for tensions of both ropes,

Tension₁ + Tension₂ = 350 pounds.

Rope tensions must sum to 350 pounds (Figure 4). Can you see that

Figure 4. The upward forces minus the downward forces equals zero; ∑F = 0.

a gain in Tension₁ by, say, 50 pounds would mean a loss in Tension₂ of 50 pounds? To be in equilibrium, it has to be.

Consider another example (Figure 5). A 350-pound bear stands evenly on two weighing scales, each reading 175 pounds (half of 350).

Suppose the bear leans so that one scale reading increases by 50 pounds. This can’t happen unless the other scale reading decreases by

Figure 5. Bear standing on two bathroom scales.

50 pounds. Only then will the combined readings add to 350 pounds. Likewise for the the supporting ropes of the scaffold. A 50-pound gain in one rope can only occur if accompanied by a 50-pound loss in the other. The answer lies in the mathematics: ∑F = 0.

Classroom activity
Place the opposite ends of a long horizontal plank on two bathroom scales on the floor (Figure 6). The sum of the two scale readings equals the weight of the plank. If you move the scales to different positions, still supporting the

Figure 6. Board resting on two bathroom scales.

plank, the readings still add to equal the weight of the plank. How nice! Now have two people stand on the plank near each end (Figure 7). The weight readings increase. How much? Enough so that the sum

Figure 7. Same board with people standing at each end.

of the weight readings equal the weights of the people and the plank. Again, the upward support forces of the springs in the scales (like the ropes holding the scaffold) equal the combined downward weights. Or, stated another way, the upward support forces minus the combined downward weights equal zero. The system is in equilibrium—balancing to zero even when the two people assume different positions along the plank.

Interestingly, the equilibrium rule applies not just to objects at rest but whenever any object or system of objects is not accelerating. Hence, a bowling ball rolling at constant velocity is in equilibrium—a state of no change. The ball rolls down the lane without a change in motion until it hits the pins, whereupon a change in its motion disrupts equilibrium. We say that objects at rest are in static equilibrium; objects moving at constant velocity (without acceleration) are in dynamic equilibrium. Whether objects are at rest
or steadily traveling in a straight-line path, ∑F = 0.

So, if you’re in an airplane moving at constant velocity, you know from
the equilibrium rule that the thrust of the engines must be equal and opposite to the air resistance that the airplane undergoes as it collides

Figure 8. At constant velocity, thrust minus air resistance equals zero; ΣF = 0.

with air molecules in its path (Figure 8). Only then will the horizontal forces on the plane sum to zero. Dynamic equilibrium occurs only if ∑F = 0. How about that!

When Nellie Newton pushes her desk across the floor at constant velocity, the equilibrium rule tells you that the amount of friction between the bottom of the desk’s legs and the floor exactly equals

Figure 9. Nellie pushing desk across floor.

Nellie’s push (Figure 9). Your knowledge of the amount of friction is simply an example of dynamic equilibrium. Cheers to that, for there’s a lot more you know when you know the laws of nature.

The equilibrium rule provides a reasoned way to view all things, whether in static (balancing rocks, steel beams in building construction) or dynamic (airplanes, bowling balls) equilibrium. For both of these types of mechanical equilibrium, all acting forces always balance to zero. In your further study, look for different forms of equilibrium, such as rotational, thermal, and chemical equilibrium. Examples of equilibrium are evident everywhere.

Paul G. Hewitt (pghewitt@aol.com) is the author of the popular textbook Conceptual Physics, 12th edition, and coauthor with his daughter Leslie and nephew John Suchocki of Conceptual Physical Science, 6th edition.

On the web
Related tutorial screencasts from www.hewittdrewit.com: 1. Equilibrium Rule: http://bit.ly/1T8XYZM; 2. Equilibrium Problems: http://bit.ly/27aKofE

Editor’s Note

This article was originally published in the Summer 2016 issue of The Science Teacher journal from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

Get Involved With NSTA!

Join NSTA today and receive The Science Teacher, the peer-reviewed journal just for high school teachers; to write for the journal, see our Author Guidelines and Call for Papers; connect on the high school level science teaching list (members can sign up on the list server); or consider joining your peers at future NSTA conferences.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

5th Annual STEM Forum & Expo, hosted by NSTA

• Denver, Colorado: July 27–29

2017 Area Conferences

• Baltimore, Maryland: October 5–7
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin: November 9–11
• New Orleans, Louisiana: November 30–December 2

National Conferences

• Los Angeles, California: March 30–April 2, 2017
• Atlanta, Georgia: March 15–18, 2018
• St. Louis, Missouri: April 11–14, 2019
• Boston, Massachusetts: March 26–29, 2020
• Chicago, Illinois: April 8–11, 2021

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