I’ve met conference attendees from all over—including Washington, Tennessee, North Carolina, as well as many from Indiana. But not all the attendees I’ve met have been of the human variety. In the exhibit hall, a possum, a pair of penguins, a snake, and a screech owl were attracting a lot of attention.

 

Every NSTA conference has some things in common—particularly the crowd of people gathered outside the exhibit hall prior to the official opening. Regardless of whether we’re in Boston, New Orleans, or Indianapolis, there is always a crowd eager to get in the hall and see the latest and greatest from the vendors displaying and demonstrating their wares. The faces change, but there’s always a crowd!
I also talked to a Seattle, Washington, science educator this morning about what she’s looking forward to experiencing at the Crossroads of Science Education. Click to hear Katie Morrison share her expectations for the conference.
Lynn

Yesterday at the NSTA national conference was my treat for myself—the CESI Engineering Is Elementary Day. My father was a metallurgist, and later a ceramist. He was good at figuring out ways to fix things and understanding the properties of materials. I looked forward to learning more about his field in a way that I can use in mine, early childhood education, and I was not disappointed!
We were given a guided tour of what engineers do by doing engineering ourselves under the guidance of Sharlene Yang, professional development director and Katy Laguzza, senior curriculum/research assistant of Engineering Is Elementary at the Boston Museum of Science, and Family Engineering founders Mia Jackson and David Heil. And we met a real, live engineer who gave an inspiring talk about how to grow up to be an engineer, NASA engineer Heather Paul who is the lead engineer for the future spacesuit life support system design. (As part of her work Heather got to meet LeVar Burton of Star Trek and Reading Rainbow fame so you know I’m jealous.) If you are an elementary teacher these programs are designed for your students and their families. If you are a birth-to-preK teacher, get their materials for your own education and look for materials for the very young children coming from Family Engineering at some time in the future.
As I look over the sessions for the NSTA 2012 national conference, I see that I will have to revise my thinking about sessions labeled General Science Elementary or K-8. For a while I found that what was being presented was more appropriately called “Grades 3-5 and you can adjust it for younger students” but now I’m finding them more appropriate to early childhood than previously.  Take a look at this session: the presenter has uploaded activity plans for preK- grade 5. Thank you Sharon Anibal for including preK!
Thursday, March 29 8:00–9:00 AM Indiana Convention Center, 212
Everybody Loves I.N.D.Y.C.A.R.S. (Incredible New Discoveries You Can Achieve Really Simply)!
Are you tired of driving in circles with the same old boring lessons? Zoom ahead of the pack and take the lead with these proven K–5 inquiry-based lessons. Presenter(s): Sharon R. Anibal (Missouri Botanical Garden: St. Louis, MO)
Where will you be today and tomorrow? If you’re at the conference, let other early childhood teachers know about sessions appropriate for this level.
Peggy

A fourth grade student was given a lengthy assignment that required much Internet “research.”  I put the word research in quotes since the word was used, but not necessarily in the spirit of its traditional meaning let alone its direct implications in science.
The student spent many hours searching Internet sites for the various facts necessary to complete the assignment. This was not the usual webquest task, but more like a term paper with a seemingly unlimited number of questions. As each answer was found, a website citation was required to be included with the content gleaned from the Internet.
Finally the student hit a wall. Although hard to believe, there seemed to be no information on the Internet about the very specific topic in question. At least none easily accessible with Google.
This so-called student of the twenty-first century, like many others when faced with a digital challenge, simply engineered a digital solution. In this particular case, the question on the assignment was entered into the Ask.com website where it was offered up to the world as one in need of an answer.
And in true web 2.0 form the same student then went ahead and submitted an answer to the question!
Now, with answer and citation in-hand, the ten-year old student soldiered on with his homework providing the answer and necessary web citation.
The story could end here except the student and assignment were not in a vacuum. Many other students were also working on the same assignment scouring the Internet for specific information at the same time. And with ask.com a popular site for answers, it’s easy to imagine that other diligent fourth graders will also cite the answer as found on “the internet” wholly unaware that the answer was supplied by a fellow student possibly only minutes before. While the debate about the appropriateness of such websites like ask.com is one for a later time, it was clear in this assignment that use of the website was acceptable.
Yes, this is an obvious case study in digital citizenship, the read-write web, academic honesty, and even plagiarism (see Plagiarizing Yourself in the Chronicle). It is also a case study in creative problem solving.
Interestingly this same forth grader appeared in this very blog one year ago when he pushed the limits on another assignment when in third grade.

I am teaching the states of matter to first graders. I was looking for some demonstrations or hands-on activities to help the students understand the concept of a gas, since they can’t really see it.
—Megan, Maryland
First of all, I’m glad to hear your school has not relegated science to a back burner. It’s important to tap into students’ natural curiosity through learning activities appropriate for their levels of understanding and interest.
I shared your request with Peggy Ashbrook, a teacher, NSTA author, and blogger on science in the early years. Based on her experiences, she suggests:

• Check out the discussion on the NSTA community forums. In one post I shared some activities I do with preschoolers to give them focused experience with air, their most familiar gas.
• Here are a few ways for young children to explore air as something, not just ‘nothing.’ They can blow on their palms and feel their breath even though they cannot see it. Using empty, clean and dry dish detergent bottles they can move feathers around with the air that comes out of the bottle when they squeeze it quickly. They understand that something is pushing the feathers. After these experiences I ask students if air can hold up something heavy, such as a book. We try it and the book always falls to the table. Then we put our breath into zip-closing plastic bags and put the book on top of them. It doesn’t fall. Some children believe the bags alone can hold the book up and we try that. Then we try the inflated bags again and ponder why this way works. Not all of the children are interested or able to put into words what they think, but a few say, “The bags keep the air there so it can’t go away when the book is on it.”

• Because air is part of so many early childhood experiences–blowing bubbles, pumping up the deflated soccer ball, feeling a breeze, and learning to whistle–I think it’s okay to use the word ‘gas’ when we talk about air.
• Dance as a model of “there are small particles moving within the substance that we can’t see with just our eyes” might be useful in introducing the idea that there is more to solids, liquids, and gasses than meets our eyes, in a general way, such as we talk about “germs.” But I’m not sure if first graders are ready for understanding the distinctions between the molecular structure of the phases of matter.
• Definitely read Bill Robertson’s Science 101 column from the December 2008 issue of Science & Children: What causes the different states of matter? 
• What’s the Matter with Teaching Children About Matter? also appeared in this issue, along with other articles on the states of matter. 

Search for a topic at the K-4 level in SciLinks, for lists of websites for teachers and students. The teacher sites usually include lesson plans or demonstrations for the topic.  Here are a few from the topic States of Matter:

• Water and Ice
• Gas in a Bag
• Discovering Properties of Water

In addition to SciLinks, NSTA has other resources for learning and sharing ideas and background on content and teaching strategies appropriate for your students:

• As Peggy suggested, join the conversations in one of the Community Forums.
• Sign up to participate in the Elementary Listserve to ask other members for suggestions or to share yours. You can learn a lot by “lurking,” too.
• The Social Networking Dashboard keeps you up to date on NSTA’s presence on Facebook and Twitter, blog updates, and forums.
• Use the Learning Center to search for NSTA journal articles, webinars, books, and professional development resources.

Just be sure that your students realize that the ‘gas’ they’re learning about in these activities is not the same as ‘gasoline.’ (Even some of my seventh graders were a little confused with the language—gas as a state of matter vs. gas as a liquid fuel for cars.
 
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyhiebert/6380128183/sizes/s/in/photostream/

Don’t you just hate it when multiple conference sessions you want to attend are occurring simultaneously, or several blocks away from one another? If you are an elementary teacher, the “Elementary Extravaganza” will give you a break! In this event, coming up this Friday, March 30, 2012, 8:00–9:30 AM in the 500 Ballroom, Indiana Convention Center, you’ll find tons of elementary-focused presentations, all in the same place. In addition to a share-a-thon, there will be information tables and resources galore. Come have a coffee and a roll and peruse the elementary offerings–there will even be door prizes!
Some of the presenters have already posted their materials online, so you’ll be able to download materials once you are back home. Search “Elementary Extravaganza” in the conference personal scheduler to access these materials.
Organizations participating in the Elementary Extravaganza include the Association of Presidential Awardees in Science Teaching, the Council for Elementary Science International, the NSTA Committee on Preschool–Elementary Science Teaching, Science and Children authors and reviewers, and the Society of Elementary Presidential Awardees.

Do you remember the book Play With Me, (Viking Press, 1955), written and illustrated by Marie Hall Ets about a child observing wildlife? Including Play With Me, five of her book are Caldecott Honor books. I also love her book, Gilberto and the Wind. In Play With Me, a young child seeks to play with animals in the woods that border her home. The animals range from insect to amphibian to mammal, and none want to play with her. She discovers that they will come closer if she sits still. In the book, the animals come right up to the child, not a realistic expectation, but the message that wildlife can be observed, not played with, comes through.
I find it difficult to take groups of children for a “nature walk” to observe animals but in the small city where I teach but we did see wildlife this week: Crows flying overhead, Cabbage white butterflies, roly-polies and starlings building a nest. So often the children at the front of the group see a robin on the grass or a squirrel in a tree and rush to get a good look, loudly shushing those behind who also want to get a close look, and scaring the animal away.  There isn’t time for the children to draw the animals but at least they can count them. A data collection log is a useful tool to carry with you as you walk.
If you have access to a park, arboretum, or a slightly wild border land, your students may see more animals. And if they go in small groups, such as with their family, they may be able to get closer to them. What do you think about making an information sheet describing a nearby park or natural area and listing the directions to it from the school, to give to each student to take home? The first question I got after speaking to parents at a local preschool was, “Where do you suggest we take our children to experience a natural area?” I think right outside our front doors is a good place to start but hope that all children will experience the untended places in woodlots and nature preserves often enough to become comfortable with nature as it is not controlled by humans. It is a different kind of experience in small and large ways and helps us understand our human place as part of nature. I love being outside where I’m just another animal, and I’m glad to be able to come inside when the weather is unpleasant or dangerous to me.
Does your class observe animals in nature?
Peggy

Both the NSTA journal Science and Children, and the NAEYC journal Young Children, were especially riveting this month, March of 2012. I quickly look through the journals to get a feel for the issue, and then put them in my reading bag or pile, unless I happen to be sitting down to the rare quiet meal by myself—then I begin to read from cover to cover. This month I’ve read them little by little and here are a few thoughts. Please get these journals and read them yourselves, and then comment below to share your thoughts.
In the Early Years column I suggest that a water source such as a birdbath can attract animals close enough to the school to observe, and collect data by drawing. On a walking fieldtrip today just around the playground and school building my preschoolers saw many signs of spring, including flowering paw-paw and Bradford pear trees, forsythia flowers, Cabbage White butterflies, and a starling carrying pine needles from the big tree up to a hole in a pipe to build a nest. Nature is waiting for us just outside the door.
The Bradford pear trees in my community are in full bloom this week—beautiful when in a still picture and on a still afternoon but troublesome in the real world, especially on a windy day or in a heavy snowfall when their limbs are likely to break, or when they spread into a wild natural area. Read about how teachers developed the role-play to engage fifth-grade students in understanding scientific inquiry, ecosystems, diversity, and risks and benefits in Banishing Bradford Pears by Cynthia Deaton and Michelle Cook. Then think of an environmental problem that is within the control of your younger students, and role-play on how to effect change. The problems that preschool age children can fix are ones we are familiar with: the sandbox is almost empty because the sand has been carried to other parts of the school yard, a classroom toy is missing parts because they were not put away when last used, the paper towel dispenser has run out because people are using two and three towels when one would be enough, or the plants in the garden are wilted because no one has watered them.
Establishing the habit of stewardship, or taking care of the environment, can start before appreciation of why this is important takes root. Even though we model good manners and environmental stewardship, our students may not copy our behavior so we can provide experiences that highlight how important these behaviors are. There will always be a range of expression of empathy in a class but by requiring “pleases” and “thank-yous” we set expectations for children as they grow. When “we all clean up to make our classroom a pleasing place” is a community expectation, it becomes a habit that we hope will carry over into the larger world. (Do you have a favorite clean-up song or signal for your classroom?)
I agree with what David Sobel says in his 2008 Focus the Nation presentation at Antioch University, Global Climate Change Meets Ecophobia. He said, “My desire is to approach this from a perspective that maximizes hope. If we lead with all the tragic implications of climate change, then we risk scaring children into despair. In Beyond Ecophobia I suggested, ‘No (environmental) tragedies before fourth grade.’” You can watch this presentation online at http://old.antiochne.edu/focusthenation/ecophobia_sobel.cfm
What will make children become environmental stewards? I think that the caring community described in the Young Children article, “One Mommy Breast and One Daddy Breast: Encountering Illness as Emergent Curriculum” is what will help young children develop a sense of responsibility for others and develop their ability to take action. In the article, a teacher who was diagnosed with breast cancer said this about how she would tell the children she worked with about her illness and the treatment process she would be going through.  “…We have dealt with difficult topics before—a knee surgery, and the death of a family pet. I believe children are capable, ready to engage, to learn. Gandini’s quote on the image of children is the one I hold on to:
All children have preparedness, potential, curiosity, and interest in constructing their learning; in engaging in social interactions and negotiating everything that the environment brings them. (Gandini, L. 1993. “The Fundamentals of the Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education,” Young Children 49 (1): 4-8)
If you believe this, it’s a no-brainer that cancer is an illness that would be discussed, documented, researched, and experienced in the classroom.”
The teacher did not exclude the children from taking the journey with her but she did not begin by describing the seriousness of her illness. The children responded with actions which were within their power—with matter-of-fact questions and discussion, making hats and hair for the teacher and wearing headscarves until they were able to accept her baldness caused by chemotherapy. This teacher and the other authors ask, “Does it protect the children to keep them apart from it [knowledge of serious illness]? Or does it isolate and remove children’s power to act?” They also said “It is not that adults would ask the children to do so [take on the responsibility of supporting an ill teacher], but that their empathy and care contributed in an essential way to the healing of others.”
Sobel reports that involvement with local nature experiences is strongly tied to environmental stewardship. The March 2012 issue of Science and Children focuses on ways to get teachers and students outside to have those direct experiences with nature. By supporting children’s development of empathy and their ability to act, as shown in the Young Children article, and providing direct experiences as part of the local nature, teachers can foster children’s love of the environment and stewardship actions appropriate to their age and ability.
Peggy