Take a look at The ChildCare Information Exchange’s current “Insta-Poll” (a casual poll of readers) on their views on the Highest Priority Teacher Training Topics. “Connecting children with nature” is fifth in priority today when I looked at the poll, mentioned by 19% of the 263 people who had so far responded and “Science” is 42^nd, tied with “Art” as mentioned by 3% of respondents. The Exchange publishes books, the Child Care Information Exchange magazine and the online ExchangeEveryDay daily early childhood newsbrief, and founded the independent non-profit organization, the World Forum Foundation, which runs a yearly conference on early care and education.
I think science walks and explorations, and making art would be excellent ways to connect children with nature. Perhaps taking nature walks would be a good first step in strengthening the science curriculum in early childhood programs.
The “Into the Woods” Teaching through Trade Books column by Karen Ansberry and Emily Morgan (Science and Children April/May 2007) describes how a class can explore a natural area outdoors, record their observations, and create a class book containing their own questions and answers about local wildlife (available at no cost online to NSTA members and to non-members after registration—scroll down to search).  “A Walk in the ‘Tall, Tall Grass’” by Kathryn Kaatz (Science and Children February 2008) describes an inquiry-based lesson (inspired by Denise Fleming’s 1991 book entitled, In the Tall, Tall Grass) that takes kindergarteners out on a nature walk to make observations and record them (available at no cost online to NSTA members and for $0.99 to non-members—scroll down to search).
Children are thrilled by the smallest discoveries, such as a critter on the sidewalk or an interesting cloud. I’m wondering, can every walk can be a nature walk in early childhood or should some be specially for observing?
Peggy

In planning for the school year, I check for safety considerations on the National Science Teachers Association website, at www.nsta.org/portals/safety.aspx#elem
Of course, each class of children is different, and I won’t know until September if any of the four-year-olds still put small objects in their mouths, or if any of the children have allergies. I’ll use the links to find safety guidelines, but once I know my class I’ll be able to know which hazards particularly apply to my students. Wearing safety goggles when working with substances such as Borax solutions which  might splash and get into children’s eyes is good practice but requires teacher vigilance to make sure children keep them on!
Some of the dangers I’ve seen occur (which I did not predict) are:

• Children blowing into a plate of dry sand that we were looking at using magnifiers and getting sand in their eyes. Now I give children just a pinch of sand into their palms and caution them not to blow or it may get into their eyes. I could also have the children use safety goggles but they find it hard to use the magnifiers at the same time.
• Children standing on a group of marbles (on purpose) and slipping. Now I only give out two marbles per child.
• Children falling when they slipped on the edge of a scarf while dancing around a room with a tile floor. We moved the scarves to a carpeted area.
• I forgot that a child had contact allergies to wheat and brought in a container of Tenebrio beetles and their babies (mealworms) which live in a bedding of oatmeal and wheat bran. Luckily another teacher remembered before I opened the container and the class just observed the insects inside.
• Children flinging dirt up into the eyes of the next child. Now I model how to dig towards oneself before we hand out the large soup spoons we use as trowels. It also helps to enthusiastically say, “Oh look at all that good dirt you are digging up! Save that dirt right next to the hole so you can use it to put back around the flower bulb/roots after you plants.”

I hope you’ll share some safety tips with all the Early Years readers by commenting below.
Washing hands after handling dirt, or other substance which may have harmful bacteria, viruses, or molds, or animals such as guinea pigs or slugs, is one of the easiest safety precautions to put into use, but it does take time. It makes sense to have a sink in every early childhood classroom and two or three might be even better! Can you suggest ways to make hand-washing go faster or an activity to do while waiting to wash?
Peggy

What’s New for July 5th on NSTA’s various online outposts

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

• Biology—Evolutionary, biological, and anatomical misconceptions, Biology Art Projects, and CheeseMaking for gifted elementary students;
• Chemistry—alcohol and flame test;
• Earth Science—Microfossil Sand Collection;
• Elementary Science—teaching the concept of the mole;
• Pedagogy—understanding labs;
• Physical Science—class instant response systems;

In NSTA’s online professional learning communities, we welcome our 20 new users this past week, and forum posts involving rates of reaction are being discussed.
On our “core site” (www.nsta.org): our web news digest is active with stories on teachers getting training on oil spills, and cotton candy, and roller coasters.
On Facebook, NASA and classwish.org are posting links to various programs for science educators.
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!

This past year I didn’t communicate well enough with some of the classroom teachers I work with so some science activities that might have been used sat on the shelf instead. Putting my efforts into doing science with the classes of children has introduced their teachers to many activities but has not developed the teachers’ knowledge of science inquiry as fully as I had hoped. So next year I plan to…..(“calm” is relative—at least the summer pace of re-thinking my science work, planning family gatherings and summer school attendance is less hectic than the weekly gathering of materials for upcoming activities and parent meetings that occur during the school year.)
Now I have more time for reflection on where I want to make improvements to the science instruction at the preschool programs I’m involved with. One school has already sent out an email requesting ideas for strengthening the curriculum for the upcoming school year. I would like to do a training in science inquiry with the classroom teachers so they can experience the process themselves away from children. Taking a professional development course about science inquiry in early childhood myself at the University of Northern Iowa is one way I’m going to develop my skills. My summer reading list has a few teaching-related items on it, including the short piece How to…Ask the Right Questions by Patricia E. Blosser, a guide to evaluating your use of questions in the classroom and how the amount of time you wait for students to answer, and how long you wait to reply, affect the students’ learning. And I’m going to look for ways to collaborate close to home so I can learn all year long—your comments on the NSTA blogs and the discussions on the NSTA email lists always inform, and planning time with the other teachers in the school helps me reflect on what and how I teach. See the Summer 2010 issue of Science and Children for more ideas about how to make professional development work for you.
Peggy

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/