Predict, Observe, Explain: Activities Enhancing Scientific Understanding

In class on Tuesday, a partner and I were both given "Heat Energy" as our specific interest in the study of Physical Science.  During a short activity, we were given a lesson plan excerpt or activity excerpt from a book called, Predict, Observe, Explain: Activities Enhancing Scientific Understanding. 

As a partnership, we were told to look through the first page of the activity and work through the activity instructions as the student.  Our activity was called "Which Contains More Heat Energy?".  Initially, I was drawn to the Did You Know? question or Hook presented at the beginning of the activity.  The story-like hook describes to students how people used to have to warm their beds using hot water bottles or hot rocks before indoor heating systems were utilized.  As the investigation, students are supposed to decide if water, rocks, or something else works better by retaining heat longer.  I found this hook to not only be interesting and applicable to the real world, but also to contain many interdisciplinary connections.  As a future teacher, I could see myself doing multiple lessons in social studies, reading, language arts, and even math that involve what people used to heat their homes before heating systems were invented.  This hook also captures the interest of students who do not believe science to be their favorite subject or even of any interest to them. 

Though the initiation was easy to read, my partner and I were thoroughly confused with the actual activity described.  After reading the activity multiple times and talking through our understandings, we did eventually come to a conclusion for how we would enact the activity in the classroom.  After working through the lesson as students, our professor asked us to turn to the following page. 

The following page was, in fact, teacher's notes for the activity!  The notes described a scientific explanation that provided background knowledge for the teacher and field experience notes that described how the activity has previously occurred when used in a classroom.  These field experience notes were helpful to try to prepare for a variety of answers, questions, and topics that may surface.  Additionally, the notes included some alternative conceptions to teach heat capacity and a full list of materials to be used.

After discussing this activity with my partner, we talked about what grade level may be appropriate for each activity.  My partner and I actually could not come to a happy compromise, primarily because of the possible safety issue involved when using boiling water in a classroom.  To both of our surprise, the activities were meant for students from 7th-12th grade!  It was thrilling to see how both my partner and myself could take a concept meant for much older students and find an instructive way to teach the applicable material to much younger, elementary students.  This activity also taught me another important lesson.  Despite the hard work and time that goes into being prepared and lesson planning, the idea of knowing exactly what to expect and knowing how to deal with problems or questions is extremely worth the work and time.  As a professional, I know that it would be unfair to my students to arrive in class using only the activity description and not utilizing other resources or background information.  Being prepared only increases my students' knowledge, and in the long run, I truly just want to see my students succeed.  As future teachers, we need to realize that the dedication to our career will shine through the light of the next generation.

Magnetism and Electricity - Science Kit Training

I attended the fourth grade "Magnetism and Electricity" science kit training today at Grantwood AEA.  Despite the fact that many of my classmates had attended their trainings much earlier in the year, I felt like I had a great deal of prior knowledge that further helped me to utilize the information I learned today.  For example, we just completed a lesson plan and pedagogical inquiry on a FOSSweb science kit of our lives.  I chose to do a fabric lesson with kindergarteners, and this allowed me to have some great background knowledge about the science kits in general.

The entire training was focused on working through the unit in a lab notebook dedicated solely to magnetism and electricity.  We worked through pre printed lab notebook pages and glued them into a journal.  Through Science Methods, I was introduced to the concept of science notebooks.  I was originally against the idea of the pre printed pages because I believed that they stifled creativity, student inquiry, and an authentic science practice.  However, my idea of the pages has been altered after experiencing the unit in this way.  We glued the pages into the notebook at every other page.  This system allowed for individual models, predictions, and scientific inquires to be made along with some structure.  Many of the pages that we were provided with had complicated drawings or lessons that would have taken class time to construct how to draw.  By providing the pages to the students, there was more room for scientific inquiry to take place, and certainly I experienced my increased learning in this way.  Yet, I do believe that a teacher should take initiative to decide when and when not to use the pre printed pages based on the activity and the students.  It was very helpful to see how pre printed pages can be used to increase student inquiry and not necessarily stifle student creativity or authentic science learning.

Another topic of interest that was discussed in my training was how to introduce science vocabulary with the kits.  The manuals include vocabulary for each lesson and overall activity, which was helpful to go over as a group during our training.  We discussed that how introducing the vocabulary after students work on a hands-on activity provides greater understanding of the concepts and vocabulary words.  Students are then provided an experience that creates meaning the student can apply to the vocabulary word and concept.  We also discussed using student definitions, especially when they are sound definitions.  There is no true reason to use book provided definitions if the student definitions make sense and are legitimate with the concept.  Teachers must recognize this when describing the definitions of words, especially when being aware of students' feelings when providing answers. The last discussion topic regarding vocabulary that occurred during the training was the idea of an index or alphabet in the back of the lab notebook.  Instead of creating a glossary at the end, our group talked about placing the vocabulary with definitions directly in the lab notebook section itself.  Not only do students have access to the vocabulary when looking through their lessons, but also an index can be included in the back of the notebook.  The index can be alphabetized and include page numbers.  The vocabulary will be easier to access but still organized and labeled.

I was pleasantly surprised when working through the lessons as a group.  We discussed every aspect of each lesson, filled in corresponding worksheets, created our own individual lab notebooks, and performed the majority of the experiments.  In addition, we were provided with many teaching resources, including quick writes for the end of each lesson segment.  This was helpful to gain perspective on the major concepts within the lessons and work on creating a bigger picture for the science kit itself.  When thinking about actually performing the science kits in a classroom, we discussed making connections for our students.  Though the kits provide great inquiry and authentic learning in terms of the nature of science, teachers still need to help students make the most important connections.  Because time is often a factor for teachers, a great option was talked about to avoid running out of time.  Taking time to review the previous lesson in the first five minutes of class the following day would be a great way to review, provide new connections, and prepare for the new lessons.

Lastly, the science kit training truly provided me with great content knowledge, but more importantly the ability to put myself in my future students' shoes.  Throughout the training, I found myself frustrated with the activity when I could not figure out exactly how to do the activity correctly.  This allows me to remember these feelings when teaching, and empathize with how my students may be feeling in science class.  Going through the training allowed me to wear both the teacher and student hat, and learn from two different perspectives. I'm extremely grateful for the techniques, resources, and discussion that I took from the training. I feel better prepared to go into the classroom and further continued my science content knowledge.  

FOSSweb: Teaching Fabric to Kindergarteners: Pedagogy Inquiry

NSES Links:

            Science as Inquiry

                         – Employ simple equipment and tools to gather data and extend the senses.

                        - Use data to construct a reasonable explanation.

                        - Use different kinds of investigations depending on the questions you are trying                            to answer.

                        - Review and ask questions about others' work.

            Physical Science

                        - Work with the observable properties of objects.

                        - Objects are made of one or more materials.

            Earth and Space Science

                        - Solids have properties of color and texture.

Iowa Core Standards:

            Science as Inquiry

                        - Use tools to gather data and extend the senses.

                        - Use data to construct reasonable explanations.

                        - Students should begin to develop the abilities to communicate, critique, and                                     analyze their work and the work of other students.

            Physical Science

                        - Objects are made of one or more materials.

                        - Objects can be described by the properties of the materials from which they are                           made. Properties can be used to separate or sort a group of objects or materials.

                        - Objects have many observable properties including size, weight, shape, color,                                     temperature and the ability to react with other substances. Those properties can be                         measured using tools such as rulers, balances and thermometers.

                       

Linn Mar District Standards:

            Inquiry and the Nature of Science

               K.A.1   Develop abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry.

Physical Science

               K.C.1 Develop understandings of the properties of objects, sizes, shapes, and colors

Science and Technology

               K.E.1 Develop understandings of the difference between natural and human made items

 

- What do students accomplish?

 Students accomplish a variety of investigations and explorations all revolving around fabric.  They begin with exploration of fabric and where it exists in their classroom.  Students also explore how different types of fabrics feel and begin to look at different types of textures.  Much of the initial investigation is inquiry based where students are interacting with fabric by "hunting" it throughout the classroom based on physical properties and creating collages with the fabric pieces.  The initial activities show students where fabric is in their world and eventually how to interact with the fabric so that it may be useful for humans.  For example, students work with weaving and sewing the fabrics to turn them into either an art piece or a useful pocket. 

In the second part of the investigation lessons, students begin to interact with fabric in a more advanced way for the individual fabrics.  To begin, students acknowledge how different fabrics react with liquid water, and can further investigate their properties based on the water droplets.  Students continue to dye, stain, and clean fabric to see how the world interacts with fabrics.  Though stains may be familiar, students are able to distinguish how the fabric is cleaned and make real world connections. As a culminating activity, students use all of their gained knowledge about fabrics to graph, as a class, which fabrics might be the most appropriate for each item of clothing.  This activity allows students to exercise their beliefs and ideas about fabrics in their world, their different properties, and how the fabrics could be used as clothes. 

- Which activities/actions do you think foster high student involvement?

The exploration and classroom fabric hunt, in particular, intrigue students because they are free to inquire about the fabric and physically search around the classroom for their particular fabric. Students are not being graded but are free to explore, creating a higher achievement of involvement.  Just by watching the videos with examples of each lesson, one could easily picture how student involvement also increases with the soiling and washing fabric activity.  Students, as the video mentioned, are rarely allowed to purposely stain their clothes so this activity gets students involved with something that they rarely do.  The students also received instant gratification as they removed the stains by washing their fabric.  Comparing the fabrics with one another added to the scientific inquiry and also gave students scientific comparisons based on stain and washing time. 

- What could you do to increase student thinking and/or involvement?

The taking fabric apart lesson along with the sewing activities seemed to lack student involvement at a variety of times.  Perhaps adding to the taking fabric apart activity to explain further why certain fabrics are woven and what certain fabrics are made out of would create more student interest.  Also, including the fabrics that students may be wearing or very familiar with would increase how involved the students are.  The sewing activity seemed like it would create a large student interest, perhaps with a better explanation and modeling in the beginning, students would be more likely to explore different ways of sewing.  The modeling seemed to little, especially for kindergarteners. Overall, many of these activities could be more relatable to students and their personal lives.

- What could you do to challenge all students?

Many of these activities can be further extended for students in a variety of ways.  In order to challenge all students, having students discuss extensions that connect to the real world allow for background knowledge and cultural knowledge to be contributed to the whole group.  Perhaps if students seem very advanced, especially in activities such as the weaving lesson, students could act as the "expert" and help other students in the classroom.  Another way to encourage students who may be advanced to go farther in their learning would be to have them create their own experiment or investigation based on what they would like to still learn about fabric. 

- How could you assess student growth throughout the unit?

The kit is very helpful in terms of laying out pre-planned assessment activities.  Student science notebooks are a great way to formatively assess student learning during many of the activities.  Kidwatching and checklist techniques can be employed again as a formative assessment during many of the lesson while students are working independently.  During the culminating activity, students have a classroom discussion about why they chose certain fabrics for certain clothing items.  This discussion, if teacher-led, would be a great way to summatively assess what students have learned, how they can apply this knowledge to the real world, and how they extend their knowledge based on what they have learned about fabric.

- Where in the lessons could you have students self-assess? What are some ideas for student self-assessment?

Students can self-assess after almost every activity in their science notebooks.  Perhaps drawing a picture or writing a short sentence would allow students to compile their thoughts about how the activity went and where they could extend their knowledge would work as a wonderful self-assessment.  When students do projects that they are truly involved in, perhaps having them self-assess their efforts and their findings would be very useful.  Students will be more motivated to self-assess their achievements and could perhaps even create individual rubrics while scoring themselves, based upon what they wanted to learn.

- What would you need to do to develop your knowledge in this area? Where could/would you begin that process?

In terms of fabric, I feel as though my knowledge is fairly broad.  However, thinking about specific fabrics and where or how they are used may be useful.  Considering what fabrics are used more often in modern times than in earlier times, for what types of materials and why would be great background knowledge to provide students with.  Personal research about man made versus machine made fabrics would be a great starting place for additional fabric knowledge.  Looking into cultural information and historical information based on fact would be interesting and useful to begin learning more about fabric.  Additionally exploring fabric stores and other options for investigating fabric would be a great place to start for learning a little background knowledge about fabric for the classroom.

Scientific Inquiry as a FORM of Scientific Practice

After reading "Scientific and Engineering Practice in K-12 Classrooms", an article by Rodger W. Bybee, a few thoughts on scientific inquiry versus the idea of scientific practice struck me.  The article clearly laid out the differences between inquiry and practice, especially when thinking specifically of the classroom in terms of mathematics and engineering.

Before taking my science methods course, I was fairly unfamiliar with STEM and how to utilize scientific inquiry within the STEM program in the classroom.  After thoroughly learning about scientific inquiry and the benefits of inquiry instruction in the classroom, I have a much better understanding of STEM.  After reading this article, my understanding of the connections between STEM, scientific inquiry, and scientific practice has innumerably increased. 

A major component of the article described how investigations and interpretation of data should be standard in the science elementary classroom.  The investigation components help students to thoroughly analyze and interpret the data they personally received.  Not only is a personal connection made here, but students are learning things applicable to math and engineering, again very beneficial for their future work. 

Though scientific inquiry is a wonderful approach, it was not as widely implemented as expected, again according to Bybee.  However, when students are doing and learning science, they are not only utilizing scientific inquiry but actually practicing science.  Within the practice of science, students are implementing strategies from scientific inquiry  The inquiry activities then become the basis for learning when practicing science.

Teaching Classmates

In Science Methods we have been working on stations role-playing in both the student and teacher roles.  My group was working on a specific station that involved soil and farming in the rain forest.  Today, Steve and I were told to teach the station to another group of students.  Before we realized what was happening, our students were at the table and waiting anxiously to hear about our station.  Steve and I had to think quickly so we looked around at the resources we had while setting up the station.  The article regarding "The Disappearing Act" that included information about the rain forest and the detrimental affects of farming in the rain forest was on our table.  We decided to have our students read parts of the article that would engage them, activate prior knowledge, and preview the material for them.  While the students were reading, Steve and I proceeded to set up our station.  When reflecting in both groups and as a class, I was proud of our quick decision to have students preview the material themselves while we worked on the set-up of the station.  I felt like we utilized our teaching skills well, and were able to make use of the limited time we were given.

During the actual activity, our students seemed engaged and to really enjoy how interactive the activity was.  Physically manipulating the soil and material helped to bring a fairly abstract concept into the classroom.  When we were ready to close the activity, Steve asked the "students" to make connections between the rainforest soil with soil in their home town.  One of our students make a great connection to a farmhouse and tilled farm land.  It was rewarding to see a student make a connection that neither Steve or I had previously thought of but that worked in the context of the lesson.

As a class, we then reflected on the different parts of our lesson and considered important parts of the opening, body, and closing.  Synthesizing this information on the board helped me to further reflect with our co-teaching and how we could have improved our lesson.  I think making the students struggle a little more with the concepts during the lesson would have increased the intensity of the station, but ultimately allowed the students to take greater control of their learning.  In our closing, I would have asked students about how their personal actions impact the rainforest.  In order to make connections, and continue to encourage students to "create", as Bloom's new theory clarifies as the final step, I would have students brainstorm ideas on how to change what is happening to the rainforest.  Students could do a wide variety of activities to change what is happening in the rainforest and decrease their personal impacts on the rainforest.

This class reflection truly helped to clarify a better reflection process for myself as a teacher, and is something that I will continue to use in the future.  I liked working with my other learning module group to use this same process in order to better how we will present our lesson on Thursday to another group of students.

Multiple Learning Sources - The Water Cycle

Today in class we added to our water cycle drawings once more and for homework, created a finalized model of The Water Cycle.  However, this was not simply a quick lesson in drawing the various components of the water cycle.  Over the past few classes, we've worked through a number of sources to acquire greater knowledge of the water cycle which attributed personally to my overall understanding of the water cycle.

We began dealing with the water cycle in our new unit: Earth and Space.  The introduction activity involved our science notebooks.  We thought about whether or not we would drink out of a filtered glass of water, essentially a solar sill that used evaporation to filter out the dirty elements of the water.  As we thought about our decision, we needed to use viable reasoning.  Personally, I knew I needed a good amount of work with the water cycle in order to have a more thorough understanding of the content.

 During the solar sill activity, we were asked to sketch our understanding of the water cycle.  I knew the basic components, and included evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.  However, I forgot to include major components such as the sun, snow, or other storage places on the earth that water travels to rather than always just the ocean.  With a partner, I added some of these additions to my cycle.  This was a nice way to remind myself what I needed to include and added another learning resource.

As a class, we watched a short "rap" video targeted for children about the water cycle.  The catchy tune and colorful drawings definitely helped spark some of my prior knowledge, and I was able to add bigger, scientific words to my water cycle such as "transpiration".  This was a different modality dealing with the same material and appealed to a different mode of language that gave me the opportunity to use background knowledge I did not even know I still held on to.

Finally, in class today we read a book about the water cycle following the life of a single raindrop.  As we read the trade book in my group, I added words that were not scientific but were instead, descriptive or helpful to aid in the understanding of my more scientific words.  Reading the book and looking at the diagrams within allowed for another learning source that helped provide me with confidence in terms of actually knowing the content of the water cycle.

As we were assigned homework today, we were told to design an entirely new model of the water cycle.  We could use personal drawings or computer images, which provided a great choice as a student.  Additionally, we were creating a final model.  As I mentioned in the modeling post previously, creating a final model truly allows the student to understand their own learning in a genuine metacognitive way.  I compared my new and final model to the first cycle and saw just how much I had learned and clarified in this short time.  I definitely attribute this great amount of learning to the use of multiple learning sources. I was able to conceptually bring together numerous information to create an in-depth, overall understanding of the water cycle.  Using different modalities and providing information through the various modes of language only adds to the learning sources in a positive way.  By interacting with the material and through the use of models, I was able to create an authentic learning process that I plan on using indefinitely with future students.

Science Learning Resources

As I was reading Ch. 7- Inquiry Learning Opportunities in our Science Methods text, I almost immediately stood behind what I was reading.  Classrooms where students complete science projects and science fairs, in addition to everyday science learning centers seems so appealing.  These activities not only engage students, but also contribute to overall inquiry learning in the classroom.  Because projects, fairs, and centers almost all include some aspect of choice and independence, incorporation of these into the classroom allows for almost "built-in" classroom management, differentiation, and incorporation of various learning styles.  When students are truly interested in something they are working on, have a choice in a specific subject matter, and a feeling of independence while working, many classroom management issues are immediately not even factors.  In terms of differentiation, learning centers offer many ways for scaffolding instruction.  I especially appreciated the idea of pairing students together of different reading levels so that both students can help each other at a science learning center together.  While considering all of these productive classroom and school ideas, I was also intrigued by the idea of science learning resources outside of the classroom. 

In particular, exploring places outside of the science classroom can become a very rewarding experience for students.  While working at a children's museum during this past summer, I gained a great deal of understanding for how museums can supplement material in the classroom.  In Ch. 7, Peters and Stout remind the reader to "place special emphasis on the reason for the trip". (Pg. 148)  This allows both teachers and students to have a focus, particularly if the trip includes a larger museum.  The museum where I was employed had such a large variety of science related exhibits and interactive activities, that a school group almost always had to consider a particular content focus before entering, to prevent suffering from information overload. 

I strongly advocate for students, when financially possible, visiting museums in school groups.  Students will further their inquiry studies by actively working in the museum and participating in science as a learner.  As the authors point out in this chapter, museums are most definitely not what they used to be.  Museums have evolved to be much more relatable, interactive, and inquiry centered places of enjoyable knowledge.  In my social studies methods course, we recently visited The History Center in Cedar Rapids.  This museum demonstrated pointedly the idea of the evolution of museums.  As a student, I remember visiting particularly well-done museums that were relatable to my life and very interesting.  Students, when given the opportunity, should utilize the out-of-school experiences to continue their learning.  This idea of informal learning, I believe, should be integrated whenever possible into classrooms of all shapes, sizes, and ages.