In the interest of making it easier for early childhood educators to teach science, I am unabashedly tooting my own horn—read the Early Years column I write in the National Science Teachers Association’s elementary school journal, Science and Children. Not an NSTA member? Some of the Early Years columns are available online to non-members at no cost in the NSTA Learning Center if one follows these steps:

1. Create an account (no charge).
2. Use the “advanced search” option.
3. Search for “early years” as a keyword and “ashbrook” as author, and “free” as cost.

I think it will be worth your while to find columns about such topics as melting, inventing animals, and the sun’s energy. While you’re there take a look at some of the other benefits of membership. Members get one journal in the mail and online access to all four NSTA journals.
Is there a topic you would like me to write about in the Early Years column? Post a comment below and let me know.
Peggy

Congratulations to our new colleagues! Whether you’re a new college grad or changing to a new role as teacher, NSTA’s SciLinks can be a valuable resource for you. Through SciLinks, teachers and students can access vetted web pages that provide real-time information and new content on a host of science topics. The websites were selected and reviewed by a team of educators (aka “webwatchers”)  before being added to the database. Some are tagged as teacher resources if they address professional issues, instructional strategies, or lesson plan suggestions.
There are two ways to find websites in SciLinks:

• Use the codes in a SciLinked textbook or NSTA publication. These codes usually appear in the margins.
• NSTA members can search the site by keyword and grade level.

Once you find the websites related to your topic you can use them in several ways:

• Recommending sites to students. As a teacher, you can provide logins for students to look at particular sites, or you can give them a list of suggestions from your “favorites.” For interested students, you could go to the next grade level to search a topic or go down a level for students who may struggle with the text. Share a login with the librarian so that he/she can remind students of this resource. If your students use the technology at the local public library, perhaps the staff there could be alerted to how and why students would access this.
• In large group settings. Why just talk about science topics when there are many sites that lend themselves to illustrating the concepts? Building bridges, watching volcanoes erupt, seeing animals congregate around a water hole at night, or accessing videos and graphics of various topics bring these topics to life. If you have a smart board or projection unit, using a simulation or video clip with the class or a small group of students could be an engaging experience for them – and the resources are free and ready when you are. You can print some of the pages of a site to supplement or update textbook information.
• Teacher learning. One thing I’ve enjoyed over the years is using the SciLinks websites to keep current on topics such as the human genome and climate change. I especially enjoy the earth science topics (I taught life and physical science, so I’m continuing to learn). If you’re unfamiliar with a topic, searching for sites geared to middle or high school students would be a quick and painless way to learn more about it.

Recently, a “Quiz Manager” feature was added in which you can create questions for a particular website in the SciLinks database and assign students to complete them. Click here to read more about this feature.

What’s New for June 14 on NSTA’s various online outposts

Highlights of stimulating conversations taking place right now on our listservs:

• Biology—Science Olympiad and online high school biology courses;
• Chemistry—“gag” lab gift ideas, like stink-bombs;
• Earth Science—Glacier activities, the Moh hardness scale, and an excellent mini-tutorial on how to find what you’re looking for on the NSTA journal archives (thanks to Nora McDevitt!;
• Elementary Science—Activities for gifted 8th graders;
• General Science—Labs on forces in motion and matter, interviewing tips and skills;
• Physical Science—Smartboards and lessons.

In NSTA’s online professional learning communities, welcome to our 82 new users this past month!
On our “core site” (www.nsta.org): read about our Urban Science Education Leadership Academy—and then register to attend!
On Facebook, educators are discussing registering for NSTA’s fall conferences, the first of which is in Kansas City.
On LinkedIn, more direct posts from NSTA’s Career Center, and discussions about springtime ferns and next generation education.
And of course, on our Twitter stream, science educators are tweeting and re-tweeting about several freebies that NSTA offers, the upcoming national San Francisco conference, and more!
Renew Your Membership!
Now is the time to insure that you don’t miss a single journal issue or one minute of the time you use to network and build professional connections here in these online communities. Click the link above to renew your membership and insure that NSTA stays in your corner for your science education career!

I teach fourth and fifth graders in our school’s “Discovery Lab.” With over 700 students I am constantly brainstorming procedures to help the lab run smoother. One thing that I want to try is to assign student roles for group work. Do you have suggestions for these roles or any other information that might be helpful?
—Melody, Grenada, Mississippi
Defining roles is a key component of cooperative learning where students share the responsibility for learning. The literature on cooperative learning describes a variety of roles: ones commonly used in science classes include group leader, data recorder, measurer, equipment manager, liaison/questioner, artist/illustrator, researcher, timekeeper, and notetaker.
However, most of these traditional roles focus on logistics and procedures. I recommend the article “Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists During Cooperative Investigations” in the April/May 2008 edition of Science Scope. The authors (Voreis, et al.) describe how they use cognitive, or thinking, roles to help students develop inquiry skills and focus their activities on higher-order discussions and questions. The article has detailed descriptions of their roles (evidence collector, prediction manager, skeptic, and researcher), guidelines for the type of questions and responsibilities for each role, and an example of an evaluation sheet.
Regardless of what roles you decide to use, have job descriptions for each. These could checklists, a bulletin board display, index cards, or a page in the students’ science notebooks. The job descriptions could include mini-rubrics and conversation starters.

If you have students with unpolished interpersonal skills, start with brief and highly structured activities. Model cooperative behaviors and examples of appropriate language. Ask students to describe how they and their teammates did their jobs (this could be an exit activity). Rotate the roles so students have a variety of experiences. Once students are comfortable with these roles, they could create video clips of what the roles “look like” in the lab setting.
To keep the groups focused and on-task, be sure students understand the expectations for the project or investigation. Share the rubric ahead of time. Monitor the groups as they work, eavesdropping on their discussions and observing their interactions (this can be a formative assessment). Cooperative learning models emphasize the importance of both group work and individual accountability. You could have the group create some parts of a report together (perhaps in their notebooks or with a class Wiki or GoogleDoc page) and then have each student write an individual conclusion or summary. Some teachers hold each student responsible for one part of a project, evaluating the components separately and then assigning a holistic evaluation for the entire project.
Working with 700+ students in a lab setting is a challenge. In addition to your cooperative groups, there are other ways you can organize activities and materials to preserve your sanity:

• Establish a routine for getting ready for class, such as posting an agenda on the board with what students need for class (notebooks, textbook, pencil, assignments to turn in, etc.).
• Have a box or tray for each lab group to make it easier to organize and count the materials and to make sure everything is in place for the next class. Label or colorcode the trays so each group can find theirs.
• Have assigned seats, assigned lab groups, and assigned roles for lab group members. These, of course, can be changed periodically.
• Designate and label places to turn in assignments and equipment trays.
• Put labels on shelves or tables to help students locate materials they may need during class.
• Colorcode materials and handouts as much as possible to distinguish grade levels, homerooms, and lab groups. Have a graphic, number, or other code that students put on work they hand in so that you know to which section it belongs.
• Be sure everything is in order before students leave.

Establish communications with the homeroom teachers (assuming they also teach science lessons) to help students make connections between the lab and classroom activities. A quick glance at a few science notebooks would let you know what the students have been doing since their last visit to your lab. And the homeroom teacher can see what projects the students are doing with you. Perhaps one role would be class secretary—a student responsible for bringing the notebooks to the lab and updating you on their other science-related activities.
Photograph:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/kasimetcalfe/118471837/

Have you ever taken your students to STEM education events at an amusement park? We’re working on a story about theme parks where students can learn while having fun, such as Ohio’s Kings Island, which holds Math and Science Days every spring. We invite you to share your experiences at these parks by leaving a comment here. We might include some comments in the story, which will be published in July.