A tip for improving science practices outside of your own classroom

As science instructors I feel it is important to try and reach out beyond the classroom to improve the learning experience of all students and not just those we teach.  I know that a lot of teachers have a hard time doing this especially when it comes to finding time.  Here is what I do and what I recommend: share lesson plans.  At my school we use area curriculum meetings to collaborate with other science teachers and determine what is and is not working.  Often teachers have a lot of insight to share. Not all teachers have the opportunity to seek master’s degrees or doctorates and this can mean that not all teachers stay on top of new ideas behind teaching.    Teachers with more experience can often offer great tips based on experience especially in areas like classroom management.  Newer teachers can tend to be more understanding of new teaching strategies that were not taught when old teachers were certified.  Collaborating with other professionals helps all teachers become more prepared to work with challenges in the classroom. Next time you are at a meeting with your grade level or content area try sharing some of your better lessons and you might just get a lot back.  This could lead to you ultimately saving time in the lesson design process.

I will add that the one barrier that can often come to sharing lessons is that all teachers work with different types of students.  At my school I am the only inclusion teacher so I need lessons geared towards working with special education students where others might only need lessons for gifted or advanced placement students.  Just no it is always ok to take lessons from a colleague and modify it for your own purpose.  

What Could be Our Generation's Sputnik

There’s no denying that Sputnik’s launch in 1957 had a tremendous impact on America’s outlooks on science.  As the article What’s Our Sputnik shows, the launching of a satellite over fifty years ago led to an increased government support for science related funding.  This funding even paved the foundations for the creation of the internet (Friedman, 2010). All of this is because US foreign policy of the 50’s had us pitted in a race for superiority with the Soviet Union.  Most likely the funding that followed Sputniks launch was America’s way of developing young minds in order to progress science so we would be the first nation to land on the moon. 

When looking back on how science education boomed after Sputnik, I think it is very likely that a similar situation could occur in our near future.  Like US relations with the Soviet Union, the United States is again finding that foreign policy is creating tense situations overseas.   We rely on other countries for oil as a natural resource and we outsource a lot of our jobs particularly in manufacturing. Additionally the US has taken a role as world police in regards to regulating the creation of nuclear weapons.   I think all of these things can lead to a new Sputnik like era for science education in the US.   For one thing I feel that global warming and rising oil prices are two main factors leading to the development of a renewable clean burning resource for energy.   Perhaps the US will invest heavily in a defense program based on new technology or develop more jobs by creating our own manufacturing plants.   Any of these could lead to the government realizing that science education is underfunded and undervalued.

One particular opponent I see is China.  China already holds a large portion of jobs that were taken from American soil.  Furthermore, China has a strong national pride for education.   Their students go through longer school weeks and progress at a faster rate.   I feel China has a plan to overtake a large portion of the financial world particularly when it comes to developing new technologies.   All of this could be because their national government does a better job at promoting STEM education.  I think this should serve as an eye opener to the US.  Currently we are doing many things to progress research in some of the areas I mentioned but I wonder, are they getting enough government funding?  Are government funds being allotted to increase science education? I have seen many budget cuts that have affected class sizes and our ability to use funds for educational laboratory learning. Luckily I feel like we are being proactive by starting development now rather than waiting for a real crisis.

Reference

 Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8.

Natural Disasters

With hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters there is always room for students to learn and help.  For this I always refer to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. I was in college when this happened and in early January 2005 while taking a geography class we spent a lot of time covering the tsunami.  It was obviously still heavily covered in the news and it proved a great opportunity for our class.  With college there is more leeway but we ended up straying from the normal curriculum of the class and ended up focusing the whole semester on the tsunami.  We covered everything in open forum discussions from the loss of life to economical repercussions.   Obviously globalization meant that this disaster would have an impact on everything like ecosystems and even refugees fleeing the wreckage.   In the long run I felt that the whole experience opened me up to being culturally sensitive and more in touch with what is going on in the world and media.  As a side effect the whole class felt this way and we all contributed to Red Cross relief funds.

Obviously I feel that sharing current events can have a huge impact on how students view science.  Natural disasters are no exception.  Now in public schools we can’t spend too much time away from curriculum but I feel that it is good to expose your students to big events like this, show how they are significant to science, politics and on a global scale, and even encourage those who can to help out in anyway.  The Red Cross is always a way to help but sometimes there is ways to emotionally help.  With every tragedy there is fear and anger and it often hits close to home.  I teach in a culturally diverse area and it’s likely that I have taught people whose family may have been affected by some form of disaster.  A simple assignment of writing a poem about or for survivors can really be uplifting.  Even now with social media it is easier to share this kind of stuff and in the long run it could make all the difference by either cheering up a person or inspiring another to donate.

The two web tools I have investigated for my project are Prezi and Animoto.  

I have found that Prezi is pretty neat.  It has a lot of features and seems easy to use.  With a lot of videos on how to use it and videos that show ideas of the things you can do it seems very friendly to new users.  I like the idea of clickable links that can take you from one subject to an area with more information instead of just moving from one slide to another like a Powerpoint. Plus Prezi also has an iPad app for Apple users.  Overall I fell like a Prezi presentation’s look and design is similar to navigating a website.

Animoto was also interesting.  It too takes pride that it differs from the normal slideshow presentation.  Animoto is instead a way to create a multimedia presentation (video) from using text, music and photos.  The main difference is that Animoto does not offer a viewer the option to explore on their own.  This can be a plus or a negative.  On one hand information is presented and a viewer does not have to search for it. On the other there is not a good way to present additional information if a viewer wants to seek it out.  Prezi has this option by adding additional links for people to dive deeper into the information.

Honestly either of these presentations tools would be a good choice.  The one thing I will say is having so many options of what you can do in Prezi seems cool but also overwhelming.

Interactive gaming for lessons

                An interesting subject matter for many of my students is space.   It’s a question that come up often (are we going to talk about space?) and because of the time limitations of the year and the vast amount of content we cover there is little time to cover this topic or really rather any topic the students might want to learn about that is outside of our curriculum.                 Being a life science teacher there is little room for really anything that is not related to the human body, evolution or ecology as these are major subject point and take up many units during our year.   However, if I was able to teach a subject that I know might interest my students I would choose space.

                A program I found on the internet that combines space and elements of physics is called: http://sciencenetlinks.com/interactives/gravity.html   it’s a simulation that allows students to adjust thrust and angle to try and meet goals of orbiting a rocket around different objects in space (i.e. the Earth, moon etc. ).  While I have seen many programs like this one( often games for students),  this one differs by the fact that the game is effected by gravitational pull of the various planets you attempt to orbit.  This makes it hard to get things right on the first try and there is a help button that goes along by explaining how gravity works.  The online interaction as well as entering data (angle and thrust) is a great way to get students comfortable and familiar with running computer programs that rely on numbers.

                If I were to use something like this in the classroom I would obviously pair it with short answer questions like” how does thrust/ angle affect trajectory?” or “how does gravity differ on earth or the moon?”.   To tie into stem careers and deeper learning I would most likely try to find a short video clips about various gravitational pulls of planets.

                I suppose my main point is that interactive games can offer a lot of science insight as well.   Recently a new Angry Birds Space game came out and it is similar to this computer program.  Using sling shots , gravity and a target students can learn about momentum , kinetic vs potential energy and even things like friction.  As far as I know this program is only available on cell phones and this would become an issue when trying to use it in the classroom.

Momentum Inquiry Design

In the momentum experiment I chose to investigate “How do different surfaces affect the momentum of marbles”.  Even though I teach life science, my knowledge of general science greatly helped me in the investigation.  In fact I was pretty sure of the outcome of any of the proposed questions but not sure how to test for all of them.  I saw a specific challenge with working with marbles and wondered what is the best way to launch them onto different surfaces.  Obviously flicking would not allow me to maintain a control speed as it is impossible to flick with the same amount of force at all times. I eventually did realize that I could use gravity and send the marble down a slope (another control) and get a constant start speed.

            From this point I chose to test surfaces that were readily available in my classroom along with a rug I could easily bring in from home.  I ended up testing two different carpet textures and both a textured and smooth tile.  My results showed that the smoother the surface (less friction) the farther and faster the ball would roll.  Ultimately I consider the experiment a success but would like to change things if I was to use this in the future with my students.  For example I believe a bigger ball would allow for more variation in the test. This is because carpets would almost immediately stop the marble where a large ball could roll better over the fibers.  Also more surfaces like sand, sandpaper and even ice might help make the experiment a little longer and more fun.  Even adding in accelerants like olive oil or WD-40 could add a more things to try out.  I think since it is an open experiment students should be able to test different ideas they have and see if they have effects on the friction of a certain surface.

            Learning about friction, momentum and even the importance of keeping controls the same are all good lessons that could come out of this one experiment. I think if I were to do this with my students I would have more options for testing i.e. let them choose the type of ball and surfaces.  Lastly I think that to relate this to students’ lives it would be cool to talk about sports and how soccer, golf and hockey are all affected by friction and how design of equipment and sports technologies accounts for this.

My Structured Inquiry Lesson was centered around our unit on genetics.  In the lesson, students created fish based on the given traits of the “parents.”  They flipped a coin (incorporating the probability aspect of genetics) to determine whether the recessive or dominant allele was being passed on from the parent to the offspring. They were given a data chart to organize their work and a list of the various traits along with pictures of many of them (i.e. tail shape, eye shape, fin size and shape, and body shape).  After gathering their data, students used the genotypes and phenotypes of their offspring fish to create a visual representation of the newly created fish.  The students did this by drawing and coloring their fish. 

Students really enjoyed this activity and were engaged throughout.  I could definitely tell that learning was taking place based on my observations of them and a concluding class discussion.  The vocabulary and genetics concepts targeted in this lesson are easily understood through the use of the graphic organizer (data chart).  The three student work samples included show that students have gained a better understanding of dominant and recessive traits, genotypes, phenotypes, and how traits are passed from parent to offspring.

Please click here to view my student work samples.