Inquiry

After listening to the powerpoint and reading the articles posted for the E lessons, I see the importance of inquiry based learning. I like the 5E plan best, and it may because I am more familiar and comfortable with it. I have to admit though, I sometimes start my lessons with notes when I start a new topic. Some of the Earth Science topics that I cover I just can't always think of something neat or catchy to do in the beginning that would allow them to do a lab first and talk about it. Some things I can- like when we talk about heat energy and different surfaces absorb and some reflect. I start with a lab where we use heat lamps and take the temperatures of the three colored cans and see what we find. Then they explain to me why the recorded the results that they have. This then leads to my notes. Does anyone else ever have trouble thinking of things to catch their kids with? I don't feel like my notes are too dry when I do them either because i usually have a section where we discuss or I show them something and we talk about what is happening and why, but I guess notes are notes! ;)

PS- Does anyone else feel like we have been in school teaching for at least a 9weeks already? Busy time of year! I'm already tired! haha

Tagging Butterflies

Hi everyone,
The butterfly society of VA hosted a butterfly festival at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research & Extension Center (VT). I saw monarchs being tagged and released for their migration to Mexico. It was awesome. Check out the Monarch Watch site. My butterfly is tag #MNT 244. I couldn't help but thinking about the nature of science!

Science is Real YOUTUBE

If you haven't seen this, check it out! I put it in my powerpoint. These guys are talented!
Science is Real This is a perfect video for the Nature of Science. Enjoy!

Nature of Science PPT

Hi everyone...
Of course I procrastinated all week and am now working on my ppt. I'm not sure how long it should be! I am trying to limit to 15 slide (I teach middle school...that's probably too many!) What do you all think?

Powerpoint and part of portfolio

Hello everyone! I hope things are going well. I just wanted to see how everyone was doing with their coursework and/or teaching. I'm in a very different environment this year co-teaching so it's a new experience for me. I've been working on my powerpoint and was just wondering how many slides you guys have. I was thinking for 15-20 but I'm not sure yet. I have also been fiddling with my e-portfolio. Only the first three pages are working... I need to work out the kinks for the national science standards page which links to all of the standards. If you're interested here it is:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/stacyjh/Web/Welcome.html


Also if you have any ideas about why it's not working right feel free to share too :)
Thanks
Stacy

What is a hypothesis?

So often our students are taught that a hypothesis is an "educated guess". I must admit that I have taught that (ugh!) In the ppt, I reflected upon Dr. P's comment that "guess" undermines the research and thought that goes into constructing a hypothesis. I really have to rethink how I explain "hypothesis"! I will retool my teaching so that I explain that a hypothesis is a testable possible explanation and not a guess at all! Today my students did a "thumb wrestling" lab but before they could formulate a hypothesis, we collected alot of data (29 students): thumb length, thums circumference, and wrist circumference. Armed with that data and discussion, each team had to come up with a hypothesis using variables that might affect the outcome of thumb wrestling competitions! This was good practice to show how much work/research is done BEFORE making a hypothesis.

Nature of Science-Challenging Stereotypes

I do a lesson at the start of the year to reveal stereotypes/ideas students may have about scientists and what scientists do. They each draw a picture of a scientist. You can imagine that many are male, have wild hair and glasses, lab coats, and often look like they are blowing something up in a lab! I do believe that the general publics' perception of scientists and what science is is biased. I see more students today drawing pictures of females and regular looking people than 5 years ago, but the stereotypes persist.
The site on Nature of Science lessons is excellent...I just printed one out called Checks lab that I might tryhttp://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/natsc.fs.html

Scientific World View

In reading the 2061 document, I was interested in the idea that studying science as a way of knowing must be very explicit in the curriculum. It is challenging to weave the different aspects of science togethr into a whole. People need a sense of how science works, along with the laws, concepts, theories, to appreciate the role of science in their life (and the importance of science in society).

The Nature of Science

Hi everyone! Today was the kids first day back...they came in drenched after waiting for their buses in a downpour! The most exciting part of teaching is immersing kids in the process of science. I started today with a discussion and activities on making observations. We then differentiate between observations and inferences. There is a great little activity called Are You FBI Material? You place 10-15 items on tray, allow the students about 15 seconds to look, then see how many items they can recall (they jot them down and compare). They remember by color, size, texture, etc.; then, after they compare, they see the value of collaborating as a team because of the unique ways each individual makes observations. If I can't find the web site where I got the idea, I will upload the document later this week.

Here is the article:
http://www.adlit.org/article/22212

Great Article

I found this article at adolescent literacy.org (a great site). It discusses using multimedia tools to help students think like scientists (literacy!).

Scientific Process

One of the points made in the NSF 2004 article was that 75% of Americans do NOT understand the scientific process. This is so disturbing to me as a science educator! The sci. process is such an important problem solving methodology...used over and over again to find answers/solutions to problems that affect EVERY citizen! In our curricula we don't spend enough time integrating PROCESS throughout the many content units; sometimes, teachers only cover sci. method as a stand alone topic, or when science fair rolls around. We need to continually address how scientists approach problems, and help students understand that experimental design leads to new info, and that process is never ending.

Journaling for Scientific Literacy

I use science journals in my class and I believe this daily opportunity for students to reflect/write/sketch in a meaningful way really promotes literacy. When my students come in the classroom, they pick up their journals (they NEVER leave the room!) and respond to a journal prompt on the board. I try to use creative prompts (I sometimes make them up on the way to school) such as, "would you rather be a dolphin or an eagle..why?" or "What does water quality mean to you?" or "If a snowflake could talk, what would it say as it falls to Earth?" Sometimes the prompts are very content specific, but they are often open-ended questions to which there are many responses.
I also bring in many news articles from the paper to read and discuss in class. Middle schoolers especially need to know, Why should I care about this?

Scientific Literacy

Well after reading those articles on what is meant by scientific literacy and statistics known, I was surprised at the stats and then again I wasn't. I mean, this is my fifth year teaching and I have seen where the students are in two different counties of Virginia and I can see there is definitely a problem there. It makes me sad to see that we are going to have young people of tomorrow's future not being able to make sense out of science articles and concepts. I look at the standards that we are given to teach and ready our students and I don't see where they are all that bad- of course there is ALWAYS room for improvement. The problem that I see mainly is the way that we are determining if a child does in fact get the concept. I don't think a multiple choice test is an accurate depiction of this. Does anyone else agree? I think there needs to be another system of clarification. A way where they need to communicate information about scientific concepts they learned in that school year. I also think there needs to be more emphasis in the science classroom on vocabulary and comprehension. I cannot tell you how many times, and I'm sure you've heard it too, that I have heard a science teacher say that they don't teach english so they shouldn't have to do things like this. We all need to come together on this because no matter what we teach- we will all see these children in our future in jobs where this concept needs to be known.