Collecting and analyzing data follows observational steps in science inquiry. To get inspired about expanding your students’ science experiences, read about the data collection by first and second grader teams who are National Elementary School Winners for Grades K-2 of the 2010-2011 Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge!
The different teams:

• Used stop watches to measure how long it takes for a car to move through the parking lot, calculated how much gas was burned by idling cars waiting for student pickup, and analyzed queues (lines) with the goal of making them move faster and more efficiently,
• Analyzed plant use of water and soil types, mapped to see where the water runoff goes to find out where the water flows after the rainfall, and found out how much water is used for the school yard.
• Gathered data from one local landfill, and counted plastic bag use at grocery stores.

Congratulations to the Concord Hill Greenies, the From Plastic to Fantastic team, the Water Rescuers team, and all participating teams on successfully taking on the Siemens Challenge! Maybe some of their teachers will share their experience at a National Science Teachers Association conference.
On the NSTA General Science list serve, teachers are sharing ideas and resources for projects that “make a difference with science.” Chicago teacher David White of Louisa May Alcott School  reports that three of his 7th grade Science students volunteered to create a No Idling PowerPoint presentation, designed to convince parents not to idle their cars when they are dropping off or picking up their kids at school. They presented it to the Local School Council, which then decided to adopt a no-idling policy.
“The girls felt very good about making a difference in our school, and when I asked them if I could share their presentation with the NSTA group, they felt even better – knowing that what they did may eventually make a difference at other schools, as well.”

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control supports school efforts to decrease idling and publishes an information sheet on collecting data for this project. 
 Hooray for data collection at every age and for sharing resources,
Peggy

I recently graduated from a teaching program with a biology certification. With the current economic situation, I’m not sure I’ll get a full-time teaching position. What should I know about substituting?
—Alex, Chattanooga, TN
Substitutes are underappreciated members of the education community. They get pre-dawn phone calls with requests to appear that day. They can be the target of students’ jokes and misconceptions. They may show up in a classroom to find no plans or resources indicating what the teacher expects of them. They’re not sure where to park or where to sit in the teachers’ lunchroom. And yet they’re expected to maintain order and provide learning activities.
Many teachers start their careers as substitutes. Substitutes with experience in a school are often considered when a long-term or full-time position becomes available. To get on the substitute list, you’ll probably go through an interview or screening process and be asked to provide copies of appropriate clearances and certificates.
If you’re unfamiliar with a school, check out the website before you sub there the first time. Learn the names of the principal and the office staff. Download a copy of the student handbook, mark the bell schedule, building map, and school rules. Create a file for each school (including its address and driving directions) and have a bag ready for those early morning calls. Include a few extra pencils, a notebook or your laptop, a coffee mug and/or water bottle, and change for the vending machines. As you find or develop lesson ideas and resources, add them to the bag.

Arrive early if you can, and be sure to look professional. You’ll probably be given a guest badge to wear; you could also create a permanent nametag for yourself (and keep in your bag). Some schools have procedures in place to welcome substitutes, show them to the classroom, and provide a set of resources, including a guest login to the network. But others do not, so be ready to ask a lot of questions.
At the end of the day, leave a report for the teacher (and keep a copy for yourself) indicating the activities you did, a list of absentees, any student issues, and commendations for students who were cooperative and on-task for each period. If you deviated from a provided lesson plan, explain your rationale. Stop at the office on the way out to return you guest badge and thank the principal for the opportunity.
In an ideal situation, the teacher knows when he or she will be out of the classroom (for a conference or planned personal event) and provides detailed plans for the class periods, a seating chart, a bell schedule, and a school map. Other times, the teacher has to be out of the classroom for a sudden illness or personal emergency. The teacher may have an “emergency” folder in the desk for these situations. In the worst-case scenario, there are no plans or resources. Whatever the situation, it’s your responsibility as a substitute to provide (or try to provide) a productive learning environment.
Even though you’re a credentialed science teacher, you may feel uncomfortable doing a lab activity with the students, especially if it involves chemicals, live specimens, flames, or projectiles. You may not be familiar with the teacher’s safety rules, his or her lab routines, and the classroom’s safety equipment. In this case, do an alternate activity and explain in your report why you did so.
If there are no plans, or if the plans say “study hall” or “video,” you’ll need to have a few tricks up your sleeve to keep students focused. As a beginning teacher, you’re still in the process of developing a repertoire of strategies and activities. Use the articles in NSTA journals and online resources for ideas. Keep a folder of ideas in your bag and indicate when and where you used them.
Two of my favorite non-lab activities relate to vocabulary. These can be used in any subject with any grade level. Collect the students’ work to share with the teacher.

• Word Splash—Using a prepared set of words or a list that the students generate (perhaps from a current event or a picture), teams of students write sentences that include two or more of the words. Ask the teams to choose two to three of their “best” sentences to share with the whole class to debrief.

• Word Sort—Give word lists to teams of students to categorize with a rationale of their thinking.

From the teacher’s perspective, a good substitute is worth his or her weight in gold. It’s reassuring to know that lesson plans and routines will be followed. When I taught seventh grade science, I let my principal know “Mr. H” was my preferred sub. He was a former science teacher who kept students on-task in a friendly manner. When I returned, the students would grumble how Mr. H. made them work!
 
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/3310525306/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Last weekend, I did volunteer work at a county park nature center. Many people were taking advantage of the beautiful weather: walking the trails, birdwatching, biking, running, and picnicking. When a family came in to the building to see the displays, I said hello and asked if I could help them find something. The little girl (about 3 years old or so) looked up and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I wanna see some NATURE!” (emphasis on the word nature).
Her enthusiasm got me thinking—how many children are encouraged to “see some nature,” whether in a schoolyard, park, nature center, wildlife refuge, zoo, arboreteum, botanical garden, or even their own backyards and neighborhoods?  How many children get the chance to plant a garden or even a single plant and watch it grow? How many children are encouraged to observe cloud formations, study the behavior of bugs, or collect rocks? How many can identify common birds and trees in their communities?

Getting children interested in nature can lead to lifelong learning. This phrase is in many schools’ mission statements but is often just that—a statement. After the little girl and her family left for the trails, I saw some active examples of lifelong learning related to nature. A woman came in and gazed intently at the list of bird sightings. She noted that someone had seen a “common moorhen.” She was perplexed because her bird guide used the name “common gallinule.” We looked at several guides at the center, and depending on the publication year, different common names were used for the same bird.  But we saw that the scientific name was the same in all of the references.
A 20-something man came in next. It was his first visit to the park, and he was excited about seeing some frogs and a salamander. He wasn’t sure what they are, so he took some photos with his cell phone. We identified the  frog (green) and the salamander (dusky).  He took a copy of the center’s guide for his next visit.
How do we foster an interest (and a passion) for lifelong learning? Citizen science projects such as those sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are popular ways to make science interesting and they can lead to lifelong interests. A popular program at our nature center is Adopt-a-Turtle. Modest donations are used to fund a college study in which small microchips are embedded in resident turtles. Periodically they are monitored for their growth and behavior patterns, and donors will get reports on “their” turtles.
As you’re planning classroom activities for next year (or your own vacation events), NSTA journals have many articles related to nature study, complete with lesson ideas and examples of student work. Many of these activities take place right in the schoolyard or nearby parks or green spaces. You can search the SciLinks database for web-based resources related to plants, animals, the environment, and ecological topics. Most parks and nature centers have websites and post updates and events on Facebook and Twitter.
When it started to rain later in the afternoon, the little girl and her family came back to the nature center. She was so excited to describe the NATURE she had seen—turtles, egrets, geese, and chipmunks. I think we have a future naturalist in our community. I hope that the schools are ready for her.

Do cell phones cause cancer?

Those five words have been floating around for over a decade, but only recently has it caught the attention of mainstream cell phone users, some of whom out of fear have changed their usage habits.
My take on this, and I’ll get it out of the way up front so I can get on with my real point here, is that I have no idea if cell phone use causes cancer, but I do feel confident in saying that I sincerely doubt that holding a radio frequency transmitter of the power of a cell phone up to the side of one’s head is conducive to the long-term wellbeing of the individual.
There. I said it. Standing out on my limb, I feel certain that some types of cell phones use could be dangerous to the health of the user.
But don’t just take my word for it, here is a more informed perspective:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naATQX5Jo4[/youtube]
My real point here is that we as teachers are now able to take a public tour into the very heart of big science—complete with all the personal biases, desired outcomes, and endless questions that muddy the scientific waters to the point where it often takes years before the answers settle out. We have studies. We have measurements. We have correlations. We have plenty of opinions. And most of all, we have an extremely large amount of personal involvement in the outcome of this grand test as we experiment upon ourselves.
This would be a great time to collect digital documents for a classroom debate about the interworkings of science, the methods, the measurements, the controlled variables, the depending and independent variables, the confounding variables, and of course, the interpretations of all of the above based on the data.
I won’t suggest that money, lobbyists, Fortune 500 companies, and personal desires should cloud the science classroom exercise, but depending on the sophistication your audience, you might share why some things are just not quite as simple as we would like them to be.
In the end, the large-scale study of something that affects billions of people including the very students and teachers in your school,  with just few days of reading, discussing and concluding might be the springboard for an intellectually rich fall semester filled with real-time science.
Oh, and a personal note. My uncle was a heavy cell phone user beginning with the toaster-sized bricks of 80s, as well as the paperback book-sized handhelds of the early 90s, and so on. He is recovering as well as can be expected from a rare form of jaw cancer.
Here are some links to get started.

• The WHO report on IARC Classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields As Possibly Carcinogenic To Humans
• National Cancer Institute: Cell Phones and Cancer Risk
• The American Cancer Society: Cell phones and cancer
• Environmental Working Group’s Cell Phone Radiation Level Look-Up

“Though wholly fabricated from such common raw materials as coal, water and air, nylon can be fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as the spider’s web, yet more elastic than any of the common natural fibers and possessing a beautiful luster.”

A Dupont Press Release announcing the development of nylon

Strong as steel? Yet finer and more elastic? Hyperbole? Nope, chemistry.

Polyamide (PA),  better known by its trade name nylon, was the first purely synthetic fiber, introduced by DuPont Corporation at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City.

It took DuPont 12 years and $27 million to refine nylon and to fine tune the industrial processes for  manufacture. With such a major investment, Du Pont spared little expense to promote nylon after its introduction, creating a public sensation, or “nylon mania”. This ended abruptly in 1941 when the U.S. entered World War II. Production capacity that had been built up to produce nylon stockings switched to the manufacture of parachutes for fliers and paratroopers. After the war ended, DuPont went back to selling nylon to the public, engaging in another promotional campaign in 1946 that resulted in an even bigger craze, triggering the so called nylon riots.

Nylons remain important plastics, and not just for use in fabrics. In its bulk form it is very wear resistant, particularly if oil-impregnated, and so is used to build gears, plain bearings, and because of good heat-resistance, increasingly for under-the-hood applications in cars, and other mechanical parts.

We have reached the 14th week of the weekly, online, video series “Chemistry Now,” and chemistry has moved to industry as a source of interesting video and lessons. As we’ve written before, please view the video, try the lessons, and let us know what you think.

Photo: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden

Through the Chemistry Now series, NSTA and NBC Learn have teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create lessons related to common, physical objects in our world and the changes they undergo every day. The series also looks at the lives and work of scientists on the frontiers of 21st century chemistry.

Video: The 1930s invention of nylon revolutionized the global textile and materials industry. “Fabricating Fabric” outlines the molecular structure and impact of the first all-synthetic fiber. Also profiled is 21st century chemist Malika Jeffries-EL from Iowa State, who devises energy-efficient organic semiconductors and LEDs.

Middle school lesson: in the Polymer Density lesson, students compare the density of various samples of polymers with liquids of known density and use their data and observations to determine the approximate density of the different polymers.

High school lesson: through the Nylon Investigation lesson, students discuss the formation of nylon, investigate its physical properties, and research the history of a polymer.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans:

[contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

I’m having some classroom management problems in my middle school science classes. I think the classroom itself provides many distractions and contributes to the problem. My middle-school students sit at lab tables, facing each other.  Their chairs spin, they are able to open the drawers and put trash in, they can turn on the sinks, and they can stuff things down the drain. How can I train these kids to sit in a chair and not play with the sinks or cabinets?
—Anne, Postville, Iowa
You might be on to something about the relationship between student behavior and their environment. I taught in a similar situation—seventh grade students sitting at lab tables of four, facing each other. I actually liked this arrangement, because I did a lot of collaborative work and the students didn’t need to move around to work with a partner or in lab groups.
However, I noticed about middle schoolers (more so than high school) all have the fidgets. It’s hard for them to stay still for long periods of time, especially by the end of the day. Expecting these students (or anyone else for that matter) to sit still for long periods of time is unrealistic.
The key is to channel their energy and remove temptations for disruptive or destructive behavior (as you’re thinking). Are there valves at the tables to turn off the water (like on a sink at home)or a master valve for the room? If so, turn off the water except on days it’s necessary. To keep kids from putting trash in the sink, cover the sink with a small board. Attach  the cover to the table with a fabric hook-and-loop fastener, so that it can be removed for labs (and you’ll hear the skritch sound if a student tries to remove it!).  This obviously works only if the water is turned off. It also provides a bit more room on the table for students to work.
Can you trade in the swivel stools for rigid ones (or adjust something underneath to keep them from revolving)? The students will still rock on them, but at least they won’t be making you dizzy. Your bulletin boards should have items related to the unit, so when students are looking at them, they’ll still be focused on science.
My colleague did not use the drawers in his lab tables and they were not lockable. So he took the handles off. He made a wire tool so that he could open them, and he stored old textbooks in them to make them heavy to pry open. And if the tables have electrical outlets—can you turn the electricity off via the circuit breaker? Or at least cover them with outlet covers. (I learned this after a student inserted a pair of forceps into the outlet with “shocking” results—I still see him around town and we can now smile about it 20 years later).
You’ll still need some ways to channel their energy, varying the activities during class: cooperative learning, think-pair-share, bellringers, hands-on activities, notebooks, working at the smartboard, stand-and-stretch breaks. As you introduce an activity, model what it should look (and sound) like. When students are working individually or in teams, walk around the room, patrolling the perimeter to answer questions or provide support. Use an empty table in the back of the room or a desk or two along the side for students who need a time-out from their groups or from the stools or who want to be closer to the front during large group discussions. Establish routines for transitions between events. I used to chant “one, two, three, look at me” to get their attention and re-focus on the front of the room. Sounds silly, but middle schoolers would clap during the “one, two, three” part.
Be sure to differentiate between disruptive or destructive behaviors and those that are simply annoying. For example, I had a student who would unconsciously tap her pencil while she was thinking. Rather than making an issue out of this, I gave her a mouse pad to deaden the sound. Another student found it hard to sit at the end of the day, so I encouraged him to stand in the back of the room instead of rocking on the stool.
But whatever you decide to do, don’t make your classroom environment sterile, joyless, and regimented. Your science classroom should be a stimulating place where you and your students can focus on activities to explore and learn.
Photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/40964293@N07/4018106328/