The budget situation in the past few years has lead to a number of teacher layoffs and reassignments.  In many cases, beginning teachers bear the brunt of these. But often overlooked are the effects of these changes on the teachers who remain (and their students), as teaching positions are shuffled around to cover the furloughed positions.
I recently talked with MH, a middle school general science teacher for 25 years. Two years ago, the district instituted a hiring freeze and began furloughing and reassigning teachers. When a high school biology teacher retired, MH (who is certified in biology) was transferred to the position. She  shared her experiences and offers advice for teachers and administrators in this situation.
Describe your middle school experience. I was teaching in a new building, in a lab that I helped to design and with a curriculum that I wrote in cooperation with my colleagues. The lab was well supplied and the inventories were in order. During my time there, I was also an athletic coach, academic team leader, and department chair. I earned a master’s degree and additional graduate credits. I served on the supervision/evaluation and professional development committees. I presented at workshops and attended NSTA conferences. I was satisfied with my middle school role and I think I did an excellent job.
How were you informed of your reassignment? I was told of the transfer during the week before the end of the school year. Staying at the middle school was not an option. So in addition to the end-of-year activities with my eighth–graders, I also had to clean out my personal materials and prepare the lab for my successor. With the move, I was no longer a department chair. I felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under me.

What is your course load at the high school? I now have four preps: academic biology, ESL (English as a Second Language ) biology (co-teaching with an ESL teacher), advanced biology, and a botany elective. I also have a homeroom, lunch duty, and one planning period per day. Fortunately, I teach in the same lab all day and I don’t have to share it with another teacher. The technology is adequate.
How much time did you get to prepare? The high school was closed for the summer, so I could not get into the lab until two weeks before classes started. I was surprised that the lab was in disarray and that the inventories were not up-to-date. Some of the equipment was not in working order, and I was concerned about the status of safety equipment. I did my best, but it took a while to get the lab in a condition that I was satisfied with.
How familiar were you with the curriculum? I am credentialed in biology but I had been away from it for a long time and I had never taught the subject at the high school level. The subject now has more emphasis on molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and genomes. The only curriculum document available to me was an applied biology curriculum, and I was told to “beef it up” for the academic class and modify it for the ESL class. I had access to the textbooks for the courses that use them. I researched other botany courses and blended them to create a curriculum for the new course, and I was compensated for this curriculum work. I did a lot of reading over the summer to catch up with the content, but I found that I actually learned content right along with the students during the year.
What were your biggest challenges? I left an environment in which we had established professional learning communities with common planning time. The high school schedule does not allow much collaboration during the school day. I do meet with the other biology teacher after school hours (we do not have any common planning time during the day). In general, the high school teachers seem to be content-focused and not as attuned to the whole child approach to education.
My lab is set up very differently. It is smaller and the students sit at the lab tables. I’ve had to adapt my instructional and classroom management strategies for this arrangement.
The middle school students were much easier to engage in the learning activities, while the high schoolers seem to focus on non-academic events, such as social activities and their jobs. But I do enjoy the level of conversations I have with the advanced biology students.
Any advice for teachers and administrators? I felt like a new teacher, starting over in an unfamiliar school teaching subjects I had never taught before. But everyone assumed that I did not need any assistance. I would suggest that

• Transferring teachers receive advance notice to vacate their classroom or lab.
• Teachers should have access to their new classrooms over the summer to prepare lessons and labs, organize materials, and inventory what is there.
• Teachers should be compensated for any curriculum updates or rewrites that they must do.
• The district safety officer should be available to assist in inventorying and any clean-up of chemicals or other materials.

My most important suggestion would be to provide a welcome and an orientation for transferring teachers. Even though I was an experienced teacher, I was unfamiliar with the school building and its culture. I had a lot of basic questions: Where is the copier? Whom do I call if there is an issue with the technology? What is the budget? What is the fire drill procedure?
It’s ironic that years ago, I requested a transfer to the high school but was refused. But change can be good. If it is something that you want to do, go for it.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spcummings/361167519/
 

This is a complete set of interactive PowerPoint Slides for High School Biology that is geared toward specific state standards. You may select the standards from any of the 50 states. The lessons are divided into nearly 100 manageable “chunks” of from 3 to 12 slides. This way the educator can use any individual topic in the sequence that best fits their curriculum. The flexibility of being able to integrate all or some of the lessons and use them at the most appropriate time is one of the best features of this program. The way the topics are broken into small, manageable pieces is also a great feature. This would allow for remediation with students who need extra time with a topic or pre-teaching a topic for students who need additional support. The animations are well done and will keep the interest of high school students. Age-appropriate animations, which won’t remind students of kindergarten, are used throughout the program. Video sequences add depth; practice problems enhance the lessons; and important terms can be clicked on to reveal more information. Some of the slides have teacher notes already embedded with information for the instructor such as insights about diagrams and instructional suggestions. Overall this is a highly useful program for biology teachers. If I were a new teacher, I could design my entire course around these slides. As an experienced teacher, I can use these slides to add depth and breadth to my existing PowerPoint slides. This product takes the “hard part” out of lesson development and gives the teacher a complete set of ready-to-use lessons. This is a great resource that I and my students have enjoyed for the past few weeks.

JogNog is an educational game site which engages students in test preparation in a fun, lively way. “This is crazy….it’s really fun but you’re also learning!” exclaimed one player. Students enter an ancient city and are challenged to “build towers” by correctly answering a series of test preparation questions in a limited amount of time. The game is enhanced by cool sound effects and visuals that may appeal to fans of video games. Players are given the chance to re-take the challenge until mastery and they “complete the tower”. At that point, they may alert a parent or teacher, via email, and request a form of “compliment” in return. One suggested compliment is “a special dessert”. Questions for the quiz towers are often aligned to textbooks or standardized state tests which cover a core curriculum. For example, one tower prepares students for the eighth grade science component of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. Other towers cover mathematics and language arts at levels ranging from elementary to high school. One versatile feature of JogNog is the ability for teachers to write their own towers. Questions may be written for a particular textbook or pulled from existing towers. After completing a unit of study, teachers may even challenge students to work in groups to write and edit their own tower of questions to be played by the class. Student feedback on this site has been very positive. Working at their own pace, students gain confidence as they practice answering multiple-choice questions under time constraints. The ability to access JogNog on mobile devices such as the iPhone allows students to get valuable test preparation on-the-go. This is an appealing alternative to test preparation booklets for many students. Teachers also benefit by using valuable class time to prepare the class for the hands-on or open-ended writing portion of state assessments. For teachers looking for a fun, interactive way to help students review the core curriculum, this product is an excellent choice.

Based on many different sectors requests to have schools integrate skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving into academic subjects, the term of 21^st century skills surfaced several years ago and has been promoted throughout the educational, political, and business arenas in recent years.  Usually the mantra goes something like –we need to prepare our students to use 21^st century skills before they enter college or the workforce.  For many years, the question has been “what is a 21^st century skill” usually followed up by “do we all mean the same thing when we say 21^st century skill?”
Recently a report titled “Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century” was released by the National Academies Press and was jointly coauthored by the Board on Testing and Assessment, Board on Science Education and the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education which attempted to do just what the different stakeholders but predominantly the educators have been asking – define 21^st century skills or as the report refers to them – 21^st century competencies (already a new word to define).
This report groups 21^st century skills into three broad domains – cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. The domains cover the following:

• the cognitive domain, which includes thinking, reasoning, and related skills;
• the intrapersonal domain, which involves self-management, including the ability to regulate one’s behavior and emotions to reach goals; and
• the interpersonal domain, which involves expressing information to others, as well as interpreting others’ messages and responding appropriately.

Interestingly enough one of the answers to a definition of a 21^st century skill is to define “deeper learning.”  According to the report brief, “Deeper learning is the process through which a person becomes capable of taking what was learned in one situation and applying it to new situations – in other words, learning for “transfer.” Through deeper learning, students develop expertise in a particular discipline or subject area.  This in itself is an interesting aspect to the proverbial pendulum in the educational world – defining 21^st century skills terms with 20^th century definition in that the concept of transfer of learning is not new – it has been around since the beginnings of educational psychology and has had various terms associated with it such expert versus novice learner in How People Learn.
However, one of the foci that the committee focused on and specifically reported on was that “deeper learning develops 21st century competencies, but also that the relationship flows both ways: 21st century competencies can aid the process of deeper learning in a discipline or subject area.” While this may not seem earth shattering, it is an interesting aspect that it has finally been summarized as a key point in this field of education and that the report begins to identify strategies that support the transfer of knowledge such as:

• Use multiple and varied representations
• of concepts and tasks,
• Encourage elaboration, questioning,
• and explanation
• Engage learners in challenging tasks,
• Teach with examples and cases
• Prime student motivation
• Use “formative” assessments,

The report does summarize the overall domain areas which were defined, the list of competencies which fall within those areas generated, as well as strategies examined that aid in the transfer of learning; however one thing was noted which still will need work before we are all on the same sheet of music, the actual agreed upon definitions of those competencies.  For one of the final recommendations for further study included “establishing agreed-upon definitions of 21st century competencies and ways to measure and assess them.”  So, while we have moved forward some, we still have many undefined ideas.
So to generate some conversation, what one competency (skill) would you want defined first and why do you think it is important?
 

The Leading Edge is a blog that asks those involved in science education leadership whether that be administrators, policy makers, supervisors, state leaders to continue the conversation on something that was presented in the recent issue of The Leaders Letter, an e-newsletter that is a joint project of the National Science Teachers Association and the National Science Educational Leadership Association.  To sign up to receive future issues of the Leaders Letter, click here  To see archived copies of the e-Newsletter, please click here.
The topic is directly related to one of the features in that month’s e-newsletter.  Recently however, one of the blog readers made a valid point that it would be great if the resources and/or links could be included within the actual blog as references or resources.  This point was well taken and made sense that if reader simply found the blog posting that they may or may not have seen the actual references and resources mentioned in the initiating document. 
Therefore, for future posts, information on the original resources and links to those references will be provided for readers use.  Thanks for your continued interest in the Leading Edge as well as the Leaders Letter.

There has always been a connection between science and math, and the new Framework for K-12 Science Education makes that connection even more pronounced. The featured articles in this issue focus on helping students see this connection, and they each have a discussion of how the activity reflects the Framework.
In the 5E lesson Should Ice Be Cubed? students apply their skills in measuring and experimental design to explore factors that influence how ice melts. The lesson uses everyday materials, and the authors provide an activity sheet and photographs of the activity. [SciLinks: States of Matter]
I suspect that when students are given the task of model-building, they may at first think of replication–assembling dioramas or making mobiles of Styrofoam planets. But Springing into Linear Models illustrates an activity that engages students at a higher level of thinking. The activity incorporates a study of force and motion with data collection, graphing, and creating a best-fit line and linear model. A sample activity sheet, tables of sample data, examples of student work, and photographs of the activity are provided. This could be a good project to connect math and science. [SciLinks: Hooke’s Law, Forces and Motion]
Measuring Up takes a commonly used measuring activity, comparing the relationship between arm span and height, and kicks it up a few notches to incorporate predicting, data collecting, graphing, descriptive statistics, and analysis (with ideas for scaffolding these concepts based on students’ prior experiences). Are We Looking at the Same Sun? is another 5E lesson that addresses data analysis, graphing, and models.  [SciLinks: Measurement and Data, Seasons]

What student wouldn’t be interested in A Special Assignment from NASA? This investigation provides an opportunity for students to apply earth science concepts such as air pressure and the atmosphere to learn more about climates. In math class, they learned the measurement and graphing components of the lesson. The authors include the NASA scenario involving atmospheric layers and temperature differences, which adds a level of reality to further investigations and data analysis. [SciLinks: Mapping, Atmosphere, Graphing Data]
Swap Meet: A Novel Way to Introduce Unit Conversion uses a card game (provided in the Connections) to simulate how fractions in a unit-conversion problem relate to each other. The article has visual examples of how to play (thank you!). I can see how manipulating the cards would be helpful for students to grasp the concept and the author emphasizes the role of the teacher in going beyond the game itself to help students connect the concept to science and math problems.
Many science teachers are concerned that their students (especially secondary ones) struggle with the math skills used in solving science problems. The authors of Identifying Mathematics Content and Integrating It into Science Instruction suggest that collaborations between math and science teachers can help. The math teacher can get ideas for practical applications of concepts and the science teacher can learn ways to reinforce or reintroduce the concepts. Students in both classes can benefit when class activities align with levels of cognitive processing (a table describing these levels is provided).
Check out the Connections for this issue (September 2012). Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, this resource has ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.

NSTA has been running informal polls of our members online and sharing the results — and your unvarnished comments — in NSTA Reports for about two years. One of the more interesting things I do as the paper’s editor is sift through the comments and share the mix of views educators expresson the given topic. Some I expect, others are enlightening. But someleave me, as a parent, concerned (for example, how can teachers of any subject supply their classrooms on $100 a year?).
Our September 2012 poll asked educators whether female students are outperformed by male students in science. Only a quarter of respondents indicated males were doing better in science classes in their school or district. A majority said they include lessons or other material to encourage girls to study, while 34% said their schools/districts had programs targeting girls’ participation in science.
But, as usual, it was the comments that got my attention! While many teachers stated they try to reach boys and girls equally, there were some who maintained that “hard-wired” gender differences account for discrepancies in performance. Others blamed cultural attitudes—”the yuck factor” and “science is for white boys” views—held in the local community for dissuading female (and non-white) students from pursuing science careers.
You can read more of the comments online. The comments leave me wondering. How tenuous are the advances in making science more accessible to all students? What do you think?

At the end of the class period, my middle school students want to rush out of the room as soon as the bell rings. Sometimes, I’m in the middle of a sentence and other times they leave the lab in a mess for the next class. Any suggestions for dealing with this chaos?
—Brad from Hawaii
Middle schoolers seem to be in such a hurry! They want to line up at the door long before the end of the class, waiting to sprint out the door. And I’ve heard teachers say “Wait a minute—we’re not finished” as students stream out of the room as soon as the bell rings. Perhaps it’s because they’re so full of energy. This high energy level can be fun to work with, although learning how to channel that energy is a challenge.
The end of the class period can be hectic (especially right before lunch or at dismissal time). I found it essential to have routines in place so the transition was orderly and we used our time productively. These routines should not be a set of arbitrary rules—they should be based on the established expectations of your classroom environment.

It sounds like you have two expectations for the end of class. Your first expectation is students leave the room ready for the next class to come in. Post it in your classroom. It helps if students have some ownership in the routines to meet this expectation. Ask them: What do we need to do at the end of the period so the next class can be ready to start? Ask each team for a few suggestions, and reserve the option to add some yourself. You’ll find a lot of duplications, but essentially you’ll see things such as pick up litter, turn in assignments, return lab materials, push chairs in, and store technology and notebooks in the designated places. Pick out a few essential ones and post them in the classroom under this expectation. Designate a team member to take charge of each group’s clean up tasks. You may need to model the routine for shutting down any technology and returning the laptops or tablets to their proper place. Make sure places to return materials are labeled and accessible. Students should know and use these routines so that you do not have to issue orders every day, other than a reminder “time to clean up.”
The second expectation is for students to pack up their thinking. If students race out of the room, it’s easy for them to forget what they did (and you’ll look at a sea of blank faces the next day). After materials are put away (or as students are doing so), use an exit activity to help them reflect on or summarize what they did and what they learned. This can be a brief note or response to a prompt, a group summary, an entry in their science notebooks, or adding to an electronic discussion via programs such as Moodle, Edmodo, or an addition to a class blog. They can be creative, too—a drawing or an acrostic in which you give the students a word and have them write a sentence or phrase starting with each letter related to the lesson. I’ve read about teachers having students post sticky notes on a class flip chart page on their way out. The teacher can use the exit activity to get a sense of what students learned or questions they still have.
Schools are not always student-friendly when it comes to bell schedules. Students may only have a few minutes to get from one class to another, even if the rooms are on opposite ends of the building. As part of your routine, make every attempt to dismiss your students in time so they can make the trek. You could ask a student to be the official timekeeper and give you a reminder sign when there are a few minutes remaining in the class period for packing up materials and their thoughts.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ms_sarahbgibson/1266617074/

Just because the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games are over doesn’t mean the enthusiasm students brought to school in August has to be. This installment of the NBC Learn/NSF videos series Science of the Summer Olympics—Maximizing the Long Jump of Bryan Clay focuses on the decathlete’s training for just one of the ten events he hoped to compete in. While Bryan Clay failed to qualify himself, you can find footage of the two American decathletes who did using the search term “decathlon” at the NBC Olympics site.

Optimization, or the process of getting the best result given the constraints, is the focus of the NSTA-developed lessons that connect to this video. While other athletes focus on optimizing their technique for one sport, decathletes have to optimize for ten—long and high jump, shot, 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and 100-, 400-, and 1500- meter runs. And all are played in just two days!

Sounds grueling. But hopefully this video/lesson package and the rest of those in the Science of the Summer Olympics series will have the opposite effect for you!

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Paralympic long jump silver medalist. Image courtesy of Ryan Taylor.

Video

“Maximizing the Long Jump of Bryan Clay” features Bryan Clay, an Olympic Gold medalist in the decathlon, and focuses on the technology used to study his form and movement as he carries out the most technologically complex event of the decathlon—the long jump. A stereoscopic, or 3D, camera provided by BMW is used to track Clay’s every movement during a jump. Clay, his coach, and engineer and biomechanist Melvin Ramey then analyze the videos to help Clay try and improve both his speed as he approaches the take-off board and, in turn, his jumping distance.

Lesson plans

Two versions of the lesson plans help students build background and develop questions they can explore regarding design optimization. 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.

SOTSO: Maximizing the Long Jump of Bryan Clay models how students might investigate a question about a projectile’s trajectory.

SOTSO: Maximizing the Long Jump of Bryan Clay, An Engineering Perspective models how students might design a launching device and use the device to test factors that influence the distance a projectile can travel.

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

The cookbook metaphor is often used to describe confirmatory labs. Much like cooks in a diner or fast-food establishment, students follow a standardized procedure (recipe) to get predictable results. But I suspect we also want students to act as chefs sometimes–creating and testing new recipes and evaluating the results.
As the authors of Open Ended Inquiry suggest, an awareness of levels of inquiry can help teachers scaffold learning experiences: confirmatory, structured, guided, and open inquiry. Using the content from a typical chemistry class (reaction rates), the authors illustrate three strategies that can be used to support open inquiry. They also provide a rubric and suggestions for helping students generate experimental ideas. Eight Ways to Do Inquiry presents a “taxonomy” of teaching strategies that foster inquiry, including protocols, modeling, taxonomy (not just in biology), product testing, design challenges, and discrepant events. [SciLinks: Inquiry]
The author of Adding Inquiry to Cookbook Labs describes how labs in her school were updated to enhance inquiry skills by adding opportunities for more student involvement. Teacher demonstrations were followed by student exploration. She provides examples of two updated investigations that were already part of the curriculum.  The cooking metaphor continues with Now You’re Cooking. The author shows how traditional investigations in heat transfer can be upgraded with extensions to basic recipes. [SciLinks: Heat Transfer, Conduction, Convection, and Radiation]

A Virtual Tour of Plate Tectonics show that not all inquiry investigations have to be hands-on. In this minds-on investigation, students examined real data on plate tectonic boundaries, using a chart to organize and summarize their findings (provided in the article). A recent Science Scope article has more ideas: Using Google Earth to Teach Plate Tectonics and Science Explanations  [SciLinks: Plate Tectonics]
If your school is using tablets (e.g., iPads), Tablets as Learning Hubs has suggestions for science applications to support inquiry, including using the camera as a magnifier or to investigate lenses, and using QR codes, probeware, and applications that are free or low-cost.  For more, see the blog Tablets as Microscopes.
The process of Fracking for Natural Gas is a topic in the news, and the author has suggestions for web-based resources. See also the articles The Keystone XL Pipeline  and Fracking Fury,  published in previous editions of Science Scope.
Don’t forget to look at the Connections for this issue (September 2012), which includes links to the studies cited in the research article. These Connections also have ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.