Elementary teachers can experience a sense of isolation when their schedules don’t allow a lot of interaction with their colleagues. I remember those days well. That’s why I was excited to see the new book, Perspectives: Research & Tips to Support Science Education, K–6. A compendium of the popular column from Science & Children, Perspectives offers teachers research and tips in a format that are easy to tackle in brief reading sessions.
The book is organized into six sections:

• General Teaching Goals
• Strategies to Facilitate Learning in Science
• Teaching Science and Other Disciplines Together
• Student Thinking and Misconceptions
• Society and Science Learning
• Developing as a Teacher

Within each section, several chapters are organized to save you time as you delve deeper into the topic. Each chapter presents a particular challenge, such as learning to observe and infer; using analogies in elementary science; cultural diversity in the classroom; the myth of catering to learning styles; and mentoring new teachers. The research findings are presented as a series of questions, and then each chapter concludes with specific advice you can use right away.
The editors of Perspectives suggest that the book can be useful in two ways: for professional development or for preservice teacher education. The original editor of the Perspectives column and the inspiration for this collection, Sandi Abell, approached the column with “the mindset of empowering teachers with approaches and methods that would not only support the teaching of science as inquiry but also the development of scientific literacy for all learners.”
Other NSTA Press resources that can assist you in your own professional development as an elementary school science teacher include Designing Effective Science Instruction: What Works in Science Classrooms and Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition, Using Children’s Books to Guide Inquiry, 3–6.

The Next Generation Science Standards are scheduled to be released this spring (after several drafts and comment periods). The NSTA journals continue a discussion with NGSS–A Focus on Physical Science (a similar article in the February issue dealt with life science). A Look at the NGSS has a one-page “Inside the NGSS Box” visual that describes the relationship between the standards, performance expectations, and supporting information.
But what would using these standards “look like” in a real classroom? The featured articles in this issue have examples of learning experiences and strategies that incorporate the NGSS:

The author of The Patterns Approach uses the question “How can we discover and use patterns in nature to predict the future or understand the past?” He describes the procedures used in his freshman physics class to guide students through the process of identifying patterns, which in this case are mathematical: linear, quadratic, inverse, and inverse square. Beyond Slopes and Points focuses on how graphs are used to describe the relationships between science phenomena (another example of patterns). The authors note that students often learn about graphing in a math class without the context of real data or science concepts. The article includes a lesson that uses activities related to shapes and categories—from observations to measurements to graphing to interpreting and predicting. No special equipment necessary! [SciLinks: Graphing]
Looking for ideas to connect chemistry to real-life situations? The author of The Ethanol Project* incorporates chemistry with role-play and writing in a project with implications beyond the classroom. She includes a scope and sequence chart for the activity, checklist on which you can base an evaluation rubric, and suggestions for adapting it to other topics in science. [SciLinks: Alternative Energy Resources]
The investigation described in What Color Do You See? is actually a foundation for more complex studies and questions. Students sort colored candies (or similar materials) under different colored lights. The lesson integrates visual perception and optics with graphing and data analysis. The author is affiliated with Project Neuron, whose website has more on this and other learning activities. [SciLinks: Color, Vision, Visible Light]
Banking on the Future addresses several misconceptions students may have about seed banks and their role in maintaining diversity. In addition to large seed banks, described in the article (and on SciLinks sites), the activity here guides students through the creation of their own classroom seed bank, with suggestions for discussion and the actual assembly of samples. [SciLinks: Seed Banks, Biodiversity]
*Don’t forget to look at the Connections for this issue (March 2013), which includes links to the resources mentioned in the articles. These Connections also have ideas you could adapt for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.

Imagine glancing over to the next car during your commute and seeing the driver with a coffee in hand AND a magazine! Okay—some of you have already witnessed such stupidity—but in the near future none of us will give it a second thought. Instead we’ll all be figuring out how to spend that time because innovative guidance systems built into our cars will “drive” us to our destinations. Preview the future in this installment of the “Science of Innovation” video series from the collaborative team of NBC Learn, USPTO, NSF, and NSTA.

Now imagine the creative brainstorming that must have gone into developing such guidance systems. “Let’s build a system that…!” and “You think we can make the car do what???” Perhaps post the following rules from the USPTO to foster creative brainstorming sessions with your students:
• Accept all ideas
• Encourage that no idea is a bad idea
• Think of as many ideas as possible
• Build on one another’s ideas
• Use wild and crazy ideas
• Keep looking for ideas

Use any one of the videos as a springboard for creative brainstorming and innovative thought. They’re available cost-free on www.NBCLearn.com, www.science360.gov, and www.uspto.gov/education. Use the link below to download the lesson plans in a format you can edit to customize for your situation. Then let us know how they work for you!

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Video

SOI: Self-Driving Cars highlights Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist supported by NSF and a Google fellow at Stanford University, who has focused his research on designing a car that uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to “drive” the car.

Lesson plans

Two versions of the lesson plans help students build background and develop safe procedures that control variables and enable them to make accurate measurements or to make good working models of the devices they are investigating. Both include strategies to support students in their own quest for answers and strategies for a more focused approach that helps all students participate in hands-on inquiry.

SOI: Self-Driving Cars, A Science Perspective describes how students might model how a typical laser range finder (LIDAR) or radar device determines the distance between it and another object.

 

SOI: Self-Driving Cars, An Engineering Perspective models how students might test how a simple kit robot with built-in sensors could navigate a maze.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans: [contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

Have you ever wondered how fast the air comes out of those newly designed hand dryers? Or perhaps how loud in decibels the fan is. The iPad is a great device for answering this and many other questions on the fly.
In order to explore the above two questions, a Pasco PASPORT Anemometer sensor was used to measure the wind speed of the dryer. In this case, a PASPORT AirLink2 transmitted wind speed data to an iPad using the SparkVue HD app.

The result was about about 25 m/s or, according to my iPad’s unit converting app, 56 miles per hour. The sensor has a maximum rating of 29 m/s. Some quick tests by several humans exhaling (blowing) into the sensor topped out about 16 m/s in case you are wondering.
The next question, the one about the loudness of the hand dryer was answered by running the decibel meter in an iPad app called Measures HD.
An iPad mini was inserted into the hand dryer, and the maximum decibel reading was recorded along with both a graph of the action, and a comparison to a common environment. As you can see in the video, the decibel level more than doubled from 45 to 95.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-a9_6vuM1Y[/youtube]
The next exploration…see if an inverse relationship is found between air speed and air pressure found (and graphed) as the sensors are moved back and forth or up and down within the hand dryer.

It was a beautiful sunny winter day in the mid Atlantic region in the mid 40s with little wind when I went walking in a wetlands park wearing a synthetic fleece jacket and nylon pants. The boardwalk over the water is made of recycled plastic “lumber” and the handrail is metal. Walking along, my body built up a strong static electric charge that hurt me as it discharged when I touched the handrail. Ouch!
Young children notice this phenomenon. They might get a small shock from a static electrical charge when they take off a sweater or snowsuit on a dry winter day. The spark can be seen if you go into a dark room to remove the sweater. Although the movement of electrons won’t be understood fully until the fifth grade when the concept of a “whole” being made of parts too small for us to see is taught, children can still play with static electricity. In the March 2013 Science and Children Early Years column, I write about using an activity, such as a Discovery Bottle, to explore it. Children will play with the bottle briefly. Talking with children about what they see will help them understand that their action of rubbing the bottle on the rug or their hair attracts the small particles to the inner wall. It’s not magic.
When children are interested in a hard-to-teach topic, reading a book can help them understand how their experience fits into the larger world. Do you have a book you read to children about electricity or a picture book that has some content about electricity? This doesn’t seem to be a common topic for fiction, and much of the non-fiction about electricity is rightfully for older elementary students.
Try these books, Electricity: Bulbs, Batteries, and Sparks (Amazing Science) by Darlene Stille (2004 Picture Window Books) and What Is Electricity? (Rookie Read-About Science) by Lisa Trumbauer (2004 Children’s Press), or see if any of the other works reviewed in NSTA Recommends will meet your needs.
Here are just a few of the many websites that describe the use of Discovery Bottles as craft projects and science experiences.
http://tunstalltimes.blogspot.com/2011/07/discovery-bottles.html
http://lagunapreschoolcurriculum.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-make-science-discovery-bottles.html
http://www.teachpreschool.org/2013/01/discovery-bottles-p-t/
http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/422.html
Wonderful as playthings, they become tools for science observation and reflection when conversation is part of the experience.

I always enjoy reading books that challenge my way of thinking. Working in education, I read many books for my professional development. Many taught me new techniques or strategies, but rare were the ones that challenged me to think in new ways. Becoming a Responsive Science Teacher: Focusing on Student Thinking in Secondary Science has at its core a philosophical framework for understanding the beginnings of scientific thinking in high school students.
The primary question the authors ask in the book is “What are the students thinking?” Responsive teachers understand that they have to assess and respond to what students need, in the moment, before they answer the question, “What should I do?” The book pays explicit attention to student thinking, interpreting it, assessing it, and making judgments about how possibly to respond.
Using case studies, such as the examination of the relationship between owls and snakes to the analysis of the meaning of lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, teachers can focus on interpreting and appreciating the substance of what their students are thinking.
The book holds out the promise that when you strive to help students work through their ideas about science, you help them learn how to learn science. The authors state that they believe that “there can and should be much more science going on in science classes.”
Attending to students’ thinking in science can be difficult, the authors explain. It can be unclear, and they may express ideas in ways that are different from what we expect to hear, but teachers need practice listening for them and to them.
As you advance your responsive listening skills to be a more effective educator, additional resources to consider include Page Keeley’s series Uncovering Student Ideas in Science; Designing Effective Science Instruction: What Works in Science Classrooms;  STEM Student Research Handbook; and Scientific Argumentation in Biology: 30 Classroom Activities.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, security lines are here to stay. What if you could move through with just a sideways glance at a camera? That’s becoming a reality with the innovation highlighted in the latest installment of the “Science of Innovation” video series from the collaborative team of NBC Learn, USPTO, NSF, and NSTA.

This installment also highlights the math for your STEM efforts. The video’s connected lesson plans go beyond fingerprints to help you guide students in using math to solve a biometrics problem. The series is available cost-free on www.NBCLearn.com, http://www.science360.gov, and www.uspto.gov/education.

Use the link below to download the lesson plans in a format you can edit to customize for your situation. And if you had to make significant changes to a lesson, we’d love to see what you did differently, as well as why you made the changes. Leave a comment, and we’ll get in touch with you with submission information. We look forward to hearing from you!

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Image of Tony Tasset’s EYE on location in Chicago’s Pritzker Park, Summer 2010, courtesy of Michael Kappel.

Video

SOI: Biometrics highlights the innovation to biometric identification made by Arun Ross, Ph.D. and Reza Derakshani, Ph.D.

Lesson plans

Two versions of the lesson plans help students build background and develop their own biometric identification method, perhaps coming together to agree on a “clue” left by a classmate by which that person might be identified. Both include strategies to support students in their own quest for answers and strategies for a more focused approach that helps all students participate in hands-on inquiry.

SOI: Biometrics, A Math Perspective models how students might investigate a question about biometrics by applying math concepts when analyzing physical features.

 

SOI: Biometrics, An Engineering Perspective models how students might devise a method for identifying individuals using physical features.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans: [contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

Are you attending the NSTA conference in San Antonio this spring? At this point, you should be registering, making arrangements for lodging and transportation, and thinking about your lesson plans for the substitute (if you haven’t done so already).

If this the first time you’ve attended the national conference, it can be overwhelming at first. Here are some suggestions, updated from last year’s blog.

Before you go:

• Add the NSTA Conference page to your bookmarks or favorites. Be sure to check out the Conference Newcomer’s page.
• Check out the new NSTA Conference app. Search sessions to build a schedule that integrates with your calendar; access maps of the Convention Center, hotels, and Exhibit Hall, share the play-by-play with social media, complete session evaluations, and more. Available for download via Google Play, the Apple Store, and coming soon to BlackBerry World.
• Decide what you’d like to focus on at the conference: What content do you want to know more about? What topics do your students struggle with? Are you looking for new digital resources, textbooks, or equipment? Get suggestions from your colleagues, too. Ask your students what you should learn more about (related to science, of course!). Then go to the conference website and use the Session Browser/Scheduler (or the app) to look at the session descriptions. You can print out a personal schedule or add the session information to your smartphone calendar (mine is getting full already). Pick a few sessions for each timeslot, in case the rooms are full. There are several conference venues, so allow travel time between sessions.
• Preview the Conference Transcript section on the conference site to access online session evaluations and tools to track your professional development. This is a great way to show your administrators which sessions you attended—my principal was always impressed.

Some hints on what to take:

• An empty bag—preferably one with wheels—if you know you can’t resist picking up every brochure, handout, and session material you encounter (resistance can be futile), although many presenters are now posting their handouts online.
• Address labels are handy for sign-up sheets and marking your program and other materials.
• If you don’t have any business cards, get some or make your own. Be sure to include your e-mail address and what and where you teach. These aregreat to handout when you’re networking with other teachers, presenters, and exhibitors.
• A cellphone camera is handy to take pictures of equipment, displays, speakers, and new friends as well as play Click!, a photoscavenger hunt on the conference app.
• Have an envelope or other system for keeping receipts and other documents. Expenses not reimbursed by your school might be tax-deductible (check with your accountant).
• Chargers or other adapters for your electronic devices.
• Above all, take comfortable walking shoes and be prepared for the San Antonio weather!

At the Conference:

• Pick up your badge holder, your copy of the program (unless you’re using an electronic option) and other conference materials ahead of time, if possible. Take some time to finalize your daily schedules. I like to put a small reminder in my badge holder with the session names, times, and locations. You can also stash a few of your business cards in your badge holder, making it easier to hand them out to new contacts and vendors.
• Consider attending the first-timers session on the first day. This year, Patricia Simmons is hosting the session “Is This Your First NSTA Conference?” on Thursday, April 11, 8:00–9:00 AM in the Texas Ballroom C, Grand Hyatt. It’s worth the time.
• Keep your smartphone handy if you’ve created a calendar on it and to access the app.
• Evaluate your sessions online or through the conference app.
• Get to the sessions early. Sometimes the smaller rooms fill up quickly. Have a back-up session in mind in case the room is full.
• Divide and conquer if you’re attending with friends or colleagues. You can only be at one place at a time, so coordinate with other teachers on what to attend and how to share notes and materials from sessions.
• Consider taking some snacks and a water bottle (the concessions are often crowded at lunch time).
• It’s tempting to collect every brochure, poster, and promotional giveaway in the exhibit area. It’s like a science wonderland! But whatever you collect, you’ll have to get home somehow. I know teachers who take an empty bag (see above under things to take) they can check on the way home (or you can ship things home via a delivery service).
• Stop by the booths at registration staffed by local teachers. Members from the Science Teachers Association of Texas (STAT), the Rio Grande Valley Science Association of Texas (RGVSA), the Texas Council of Elementary Science (TCES), and the Texas Science Education Leadership Association (TSELA) will be on hand to fill you in on the many science education opportunities in Texas
• Keep a log or journal of the sessions you attended, people you met, and new ideas. Update your homepage, Facebook, tweets, or class Wiki/blog with a summary of what you are learning at the conference. I’ve even seen teachers Skyping back to their students!
• Update your conference transcript.
• Put your cell phone on mute during sessions.
• Introduce yourself to teachers at the sessions or events. You’ll meet lots of interesting people and make many new personal connections. Although it’s important to keep up with your colleagues via texts/tweets/email, take the opportunity to actually talk to the teachers in line with you or sitting next to you at a session. The value of a face-to-face conference is meeting and interacting with real people, and teachers are the most interesting people of all.
• Attend a session or two on a topic you know nothing about. It’s a good way to learn something new.

Back Home:

• Share your experiences with your students. Use some of the promotional items you collected as prizes or gifts.
• Organize and file your notes and handouts. Share the materials and what you learned with your colleagues.
• Send a note of appreciation to the administrator who approved your attendance at the conference. Write a brief article for the school or district newsletter, if appropriate.
• Access your transcript online.
• Get ready for next year!

 

 

Research indicates that many students do not develop proficiency in scientific practices, such as argumentation. The Framework for K-12 Science Education and the forthcoming Next Generation Science Standards emphasize eight practices that are key elements of K–12 science and engineering instruction, and one practice is “engaging in argument from evidence.” In Scientific Argumentation in Biology: 30 Classroom Activities, authors Victor Sampson and Sharon Schleigh present a framework for teaching students how to understand how an argument in science is different than an argument that is used in everyday contexts or in other disciplines such as history, religion, or even politics. The framework is illustrated here:

Strategies and Activities of Argumentation

To integrate argumentation into the teaching and learning of biology,  you can use a number of strategies. The book breaks down these strategies into three main ones:
1. The construction of a good argument that provides and justifies a conclusion, explanation, or some other answer to a research question. Examples of activities for teaching your students to generate arguments include Fruit Fly Traits, Evolutionary Relationships in Mammals, and Characteristics of Viruses.
2. The design of  activities or tasks that require students to examine and evaluate alternative theoretical interpretations of a particular phenomenon. Examples of activities for teaching your students to evaluate alternatives include Plant Biomass (photosynthesis), Cell Size and Diffusion (diffusion), and Healthy Diet and Weight (human health).
3. The writing of a refutational essay to allow students to explain why a common misconception is inaccurate and then explain why a scientific view is more valid or acceptable from a scientific perspective. Examples of activities for teaching your students to write a refutational essay include Misconception About the Nature of Scientific Knowledge (nature of science), Misconception About Bacteria (microbiology), an Misconception About Inheritance of Traits (genetics).
The teacher notes included with each activity provide specific ways in which you can supplement what you are doing in your biology class. Help your students move beyond expressing mere opinions when making their claims.
Other resources to aide your biology instruction include The Biology Teacher’s Handbook and Hard-to-Teach Biology Concepts. For additional NSTA resources on argumentation and discussion in science class, see “Engaging Students in the Scientific Practices of Explanation and Argumentation,” an NGSS-related article by Reiser, Berland, and Kenyon published in NSTA’s April 2012 journal issues, and the free chapter “Scientific Inquiry: The Place of Interpretation and Argumentation” from Science as Inquiry in the Secondary Setting.