Studying Science Teaching and Learning Through Drawings

I came across this fascinating study via a tweet the other day. I read many traditional research studies (both quantitative and qualitative) but this one caught my attention because it used drawings as a way of communicating and data collecting. According to the authors (a team form the University of Maryland and other institutions), the study examines “how the science teaching identity of the teacher interns/teachers changed over time” based on their internship experiences. Rather than a traditional questionnaire or observations, this study used drawings as evidence, along with interviews and written responses. Periodically through the study, the teacher-participants responded to two prompts:  Draw Yourself Teaching Science and Draw Your Students Learning Science.

The methodology and the scoring rubric are provided. What’s really interesting are the examples of drawings at the rubric levels and how they represent different levels of the teacher’s self-image and reflections on the teaching and learning processes and the roles of teachers and students in these processes.

Another part of the website is the section for “Educators” with ideas on how the process can be used for lesson plans, action research, and professional development.

• The lesson plans have suggestions for asking students (of any age) to draw their interpretation of science learning. Follow-up discussion questions are included.
• There is a description of the action research process and how drawings can be a data tool. I could see the process used at the beginning and end of the school year to examine an changes in student attitudes and perceptions.
• The “Try It” section has suggestions for exploring our own perceptions as teachers. This could be an interesting ice-breaker activity for a PD session or for personal reflection.

This project focused on teaching and learning in science. You may already be familiar with instruments in which students draw pictures to represent their conceptions and misconceptions about scientists and their work: Draw a Scientist Test (Wikipedia description), Who’s the Scientist, The Scientists and Artist in All.

Graphic: http://drawntoscience.org/index.html

One of my favorite benefits of being an NSTA member is being able to view all of the journals electronically, although I’m somewhat of a dinosaur in that I still like the feel of holding an actual book or magazine. On the NSTA home page, use the links in the “Choose Your Classroom” list to get to the current and archived issues of NSTA journals for elementary, middle school, high school, and college.

I subscribe to the hard copies of The Science Teacher and Science Scope, being a veteran secondary teacher. I toss the latest issues into a bag to read articles in between meetings, with my morning coffee or late night cocoa, or in the car (not while I’m driving, of course!). I also enjoy and learn a lot from reading Science and Children online for ideas and insights, and I’m now reading these articles on my iPad, which fits into my bag too.

Sometimes I wonder about the artificial boundaries we create as teachers: elementary vs. secondary, K-12 vs. higher education, middle school vs. high school. Having been an educator at all of these levels, I’ve found that there are as many similarities as differences. If you take a few minutes to browse the table of contents for the journals that are outside your own teaching assignments (or read the related SciLinks blogs or the highlights on Facebook and Twitter @NSTA or the summaries on the Social Networking Dashboard) you might identify a few articles of interest to download and read. For example, if you’re not up to date on content, the secondary journals may help you. Or you may have students who could benefit from more advanced activities, or those who need some fundamental experiences.

I suspect that many K-12 teachers don’t look at the Journal of College Science Teaching, but this is another excellent resource. It’s interesting that some of the articles in this higher education publication are about topics and issues with which all of us in K-12 can identify. For example, there have been articles about team dynamics in cooperative learning, the use of learning contracts, using “clicker” response systems in class, and a comparison of cookbook labs and authentic research activities. Even though the students described in these articles are older, there are a lot of commonalities with science education at all levels. Best of all, unlike some higher education publications, the articles in JCST are very readable, not written in “journalese.”

You can download journal articles as PDFs directly to your desktop or iPad. Or you can take advantage of NSTA’s Learning Center to save relevant articles in your own online library or organized them into a resource collection.

Every month, our colleague Ken Roy shares important information about safety in the science classrooms and laboratories. His columns appear in Science Scope and The Science Teacher. These are “must-reads” for science teachers, and NSTA members can access articles in both of these online, regardless of which journal you receive in print. The information can and should be shared with administrators and discussed at faculty meetings.

Usually his column in each journal is different, but I noticed in the April/May editions OSHA’s Newest Lab Resource was discussed in both columns: Science Scope’s Scope on Safety and The Science Teacher’s Safer Science.

Ken describes this latest resource, the publication Laboratory Safety Guidance, which can be read online or downloaded as a PDF at no cost. According to Ken this document is “intended to help science teachers and their supervisors maintain safer, healthier laboratories and ensure that applicable health, safety, and environmental regulations are followed.” The booklet summarizes applicable OSHA standards for laboratory workers and focuses on chemical hazards, biological hazards, and safety hazards. OSHA’s Laboratories site also has links to fact sheets and other information.

Publications such as NSTA’s Exploring Safely (elementary), Inquiring Safely (middle school), and Investigating Safely (high school) also have a wealth of practical, relevant information and should be in your school or personal library–read about them at the NSTA Press site. NSTA also has position papers related to student lab work and safety and a Safety in the Science Classroom Portal. And if you search for “safety” and your grade level in NSTA’s SciLinks, you can access even more resources and information. Let’s be careful out there!

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Although it’s snowing on this April day in the Northeast, I suspect that many students (and teachers) are thinking of the summer break. But as the theme of this issue suggests, students will keep on learning. How can we as teachers build on their experiences when they return from a break? How can we encourage them to take advantages of learning opportunities in their neighborhoods and communities?

If you’re thinking of what to do in a summer program, Slithering Into Summer has ideas for helping students to explore reptiles and amphibians. [SciLinks: Amphibians, Reptiles] I could see also this being adapted for a teacher professional development project, such as the one described in Bayou-tiful Data. The author describes how her summer experience led to the creation of similar learning opportunities for her students to investigate water quality. Just Me and You—And a Whole Community Down by the Stream has ideas for starting a science club and engaging the students in studies of nearby habitats. [SciLinks: Water Quality, Wetlands]

A teacher summer institute that also includes a summer camp for students sounds like a win-win program. The authors of Is Your Soil Sick? describe how teachers and students collaborated on an investigation of soil quality. Learning and getting dirty—sounds like a good combination. [SciLinks: Soil, Soil Types]

Summer Science has more suggestions for family involvement, particularly for younger students. And get out the sunblock for Solar Energy: Fun in the Sunas you read about solar activities at a camp for junior naturalists, especially building and cooking in solar ovens. [SciLinks: Alternative Energy Resources]

The title Studying Zooarchaeology brought back memories of a student who was really interested in word origins. He would probably have figured out that this is about the study of animals remains such as bones, shells, or teeth found in archeological digs. The investigation describe here focuses on observing artifacts and making inferences about their history. [SciLinks: Animal Bones]

I’ve always admired those who keep journals that are more than dates and events. Notebooking Like a Naturalist has ideas for using trade books and modeling for young naturalists interested in this lifelong process. As an alternative to sending home find-a-word puzzles or coloring pages, take a look at the four enrichment activities and photos in A Traveler’s Guide to the Universe. Students and their families or friends can do these together under starry skies with a pair of binoculars. [SciLinks: Stars, Moon Phases, Constellations]

Birdwatching, sports events, wildlife viewing, and stargazing are popular vacation activities. How Do Binoculars Work? has a brief primer on the principles of optics that bring objects up close and personal. I’ve visited many national, state, and local parks that have a lending program for visitors—a nice way for families who can’t afford (or forgot to bring) equipment. [SciLinks: Lenses]

Many of these articles have extensive resources to share, so check out the Connections for this issue (April/May 2012). Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, there are ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, and other resources.

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Although schools may have mission statements and other documents about providing opportunities for all students, the real work occurs in the classrooms—and this issue has many suggestions for doing so.  For example, Accommodating Differences describes strategies to involve all students in class activities, noting that “All classes, even homogeneous ones, show varying levels of ability and motivation.”

I’ve seen how many strategies for accommodate English Language Learners (ELLs) work for all students. Striking a Balance has examples for ramping up the use of learning centers to include activities in reading, writing, content review, and vocabulary in science. The Snowball Questioning Methoddescribes a variation on the Think-Pair-Share and Wait Time strategies for getting students involved in discussions. The author notes an increase in student engagement and an improvement in quiz scores when using this method! [SciLinks: Student Equity]

A colleague in social studies always emphasized the “story” in history. He crafted lessons that put events into a narrative context that emphasized the people involved. Las Rocas Nos Cuentan Su Historia (Rocks Tell Their Stories) takes a similar approach to geology—exploring the stories told in rocks. Students compare and contrast the characteristics of rock samples (a sample worksheet is provided) rather than memorize names of rocks. [SciLinks: Identifying Rocks and Minerals, Rock Formations, Rock Types, Rock Cycles]

Science terminology and text reading is a struggle for all students, but especially for ELLs. The authors of Every Word You Speak describe five levels of language development and provide examples of prompts or questions that can be used at each level to encourage participation. There are also examples of word maps and organizing charts that can help all students who struggle with learning the language of science.

Taking the Leap is subtitled “A classroom bungee jump activity helps students understand physics concepts.” I had visions of students leaping out of windows, until I read that this is a variation on the egg-drop activity that many teachers use. The investigation includes a number of physics concepts, graphing, and mathematical applications. [SciLinks: Acceleration, Elasticity, Force of Gravity, Hooke's Law, Potential and Kinetic Energy]

One way to engage students is through projects that are connected to a real-life need or situation. Hands-On Hydroponics illustrates a 5e inquiry lesson in which students build hydroponic growing systems (photographs are provided) and use them to investigate questions related to sustainability and plant biology as related to the increasing need for food. [SciLinks: Hydrophoncs, Plant Growth]

Don’t forget to look at the Connections for this issue (April/May 2012). Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, this resource has ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.

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Do you need an interesting way to start a faculty meeting? Try the assessment crossword in this month’s Editor’s Roundtable. Even if you give your colleagues a word bank for their responses, the puzzle can be a discussion-starter. I occasionally gave this type of quiz to my students. They seemed somewhat surprised at this change of format, but they seemed to spend more time on figuring out and discussing the responses.

Although assessments are often seen as the “final” part of learning, assessments can actually be starting points. In the guest editorial Misunderstanding Misconceptions, Page Keeley discusses the use of formative assessment probes to identify students’ misconceptions. There is even a list of misunderstandings teachers may have about misconceptions—another topic for a faculty meeting.

The choice of words used in instruction can reinforce misconceptions, such as students assuming that the words guess, prediction, and hypothesis are interchangeable. More Than Just Guessing: The Difference Between Prediction and Hypothesis describes the nuances of these words and provides examples and definitions. For example, a prediction “reflects our thoughts about what will happen in the future, but it is based on patterns we have observed or on our prior knowledge.” A hypothesis goes further than a prediction, using “prior knowledge to create an experimental design that can be tested.” The author suggests an if-then-because format for a hypothesis statement. [SciLinks: Scientific Methods]

Another misconception held by students, parents, and administrators (and a few teachers) is that any hands-on activity is “inquiry.” Two articles address this issue. Folding Inquiry Into Cookbook Activities has suggestions for transforming traditional “labs” into higher levels of inquiry as students develop more ownership in the purpose and design of the investigation. An Integrated Instructional Approach to Facilitate Inquiry in the Classroom discusses inquiry as a continuum of approaches and describes a 7E learning cycle model integrated with a KLEW strategy (know-learn-evidence-wonder) in a unit on the water cycle. [SciLinks: Water Cycle, Scientific Investigations]

Creating Science Assessments That Support Inquiry has examples of assessment items that incorporate graphics, scenarios, and quotes as a context for student responses at the remembering, analyzing, and evaluating levels. Even so, when we use an assessment, many times we are so focused on how many students choose the correct answer, that we don’t see the patterns in and misconceptions in the incorrect responses. What were they thinking? Applying Scientific Principles to Resolve Student Misconceptions looks at a topic which students may struggle to understand (buoyancy) and has a graphic showing how students’ perceptions of sinking and floating have an impact on their responses to assessment items. Understading their responses can be helpful when planning instruction. [SciLinks: Buoyancy, Density]

The authors of Investigating Students’ Ideas About the Flow of Matter and Energy in Living Systems describe in detail student misconceptions about this topic—where food comes from and how it is used in the body. The list of ideas about food (i.e., matter and energy in living systems) includes related misconceptions students may have—an excellent resource for the topic, an analysis of student responses, and words teachers can use to enhance student understanding. [SciLinks: Food and Energy] In the realm of physical science, A Change for Chemistry differentiates between preconceptions (“coherent ideas prior to instruction”) and misconceptions (“scientifically inaccurate ideas”) and how teachers can learn more about student thinking from a pre-assessment than by checking wrong answers on a final test. A list of common misconceptions about the nature of matter is included. [SciLinks: Physical/Chemical Changes, States of Matter]

At the recent NSTA conference, I saw many teachers using iPads for not only checking email or finding information but also for taking photos of exhibits and presentation screens (rather than copying information). A Coruscating Star in the Cavalcade of Electronic Devices: The iPad has a overview of this tool and several science apps that are applicable for teaching and learning. (OK – I had to look up the meaning of coruscating: flashing or sparkling; brilliant or striking in content or style, which seems to describe the tool and its applications well!)

I am teaching the states of matter to first graders. I was looking for some demonstrations or hands-on activities to help the students understand the concept of a gas, since they can’t really see it.
—Megan, Maryland

First of all, I’m glad to hear your school has not relegated science to a back burner. It’s important to tap into students’ natural curiosity through learning activities appropriate for their levels of understanding and interest.

I shared your request with Peggy Ashbrook, a teacher, NSTA author, and blogger on science in the early years. Based on her experiences, she suggests:

• Check out the discussion on the NSTA community forums. In one post I shared some activities I do with preschoolers to give them focused experience with air, their most familiar gas.
• Here are a few ways for young children to explore air as something, not just ‘nothing.’ They can blow on their palms and feel their breath even though they cannot see it. Using empty, clean and dry dish detergent bottles they can move feathers around with the air that comes out of the bottle when they squeeze it quickly. They understand that something is pushing the feathers. After these experiences I ask students if air can hold up something heavy, such as a book. We try it and the book always falls to the table. Then we put our breath into zip-closing plastic bags and put the book on top of them. It doesn’t fall. Some children believe the bags alone can hold the book up and we try that. Then we try the inflated bags again and ponder why this way works. Not all of the children are interested or able to put into words what they think, but a few say, “The bags keep the air there so it can’t go away when the book is on it.”

• Because air is part of so many early childhood experiences–blowing bubbles, pumping up the deflated soccer ball, feeling a breeze, and learning to whistle–I think it’s okay to use the word ‘gas’ when we talk about air.
• Dance as a model of “there are small particles moving within the substance that we can’t see with just our eyes” might be useful in introducing the idea that there is more to solids, liquids, and gasses than meets our eyes, in a general way, such as we talk about “germs.” But I’m not sure if first graders are ready for understanding the distinctions between the molecular structure of the phases of matter.
• Definitely read Bill Robertson’s Science 101 column from the December 2008 issue of Science & Children: What causes the different states of matter? 
• What’s the Matter with Teaching Children About Matter? also appeared in this issue, along with other articles on the states of matter. 

Search for a topic at the K-4 level in SciLinks, for lists of websites for teachers and students. The teacher sites usually include lesson plans or demonstrations for the topic.  Here are a few from the topic States of Matter:

• Water and Ice
• Gas in a Bag
• Discovering Properties of Water

In addition to SciLinks, NSTA has other resources for learning and sharing ideas and background on content and teaching strategies appropriate for your students:

• As Peggy suggested, join the conversations in one of the Community Forums.
• Sign up to participate in the Elementary Listserve to ask other members for suggestions or to share yours. You can learn a lot by “lurking,” too.
• The Social Networking Dashboard keeps you up to date on NSTA’s presence on Facebook and Twitter, blog updates, and forums.
• Use the Learning Center to search for NSTA journal articles, webinars, books, and professional development resources.

Just be sure that your students realize that the ‘gas’ they’re learning about in these activities is not the same as ‘gasoline.’ (Even some of my seventh graders were a little confused with the language—gas as a state of matter vs. gas as a liquid fuel for cars.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyhiebert/6380128183/sizes/s/in/photostream/

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A lot has changed since the first Earth Day, especially in the area of technology and the emphasis on test results. The More High-Tech Our Schools Become, the More They Need Nature sets the stage for the rest of this issue with Richard Low’s call for both formal and informal learning activities for “no child left inside.”

Do Earth Day activities have a life beyond the designated day? The authors of Green Team to the Rescue state that “The environmental science opportunities we offered were one-shot lessons sprinkled throughout science units; they were not connected across grade levels and rarely tied to the world outside the classroom.” So they transformed an afterschool club into a service learning opportunity that helped students develop leadership skills in environmental science. They provide descriptions of some of their students’ projects.

Sweetgrass Science focused on place-based education and making classroom content more meaningful to students by connecting science content to the lives of the students through local issues, culture, and people. Although the project was based in South Carolina, it’s certainly possible to replicate this interdisciplinary study anywhere. Get ‘Em Outside is another example of place-based education–in this case students turning an abandoned lot into a nature study center for activities such as the identification ones described in The Naming Convention. [SciLinks: Taxonomy]

Banishing Bradford Pears has suggestions for an activity in which students investigate a topic (in this case, an introduced species of ornamental tree) from several points of view and share their findings via role-playing.    [SciLinks: Invasive Species]  Speaking of trees, although buds are bursting early this spring, students may ask Why Do Leaves Fall Off Trees in the Fall? This explanation is an easy read that can be shared with students. [SciLinks: Plant Tropisms, Identifying Trees, Autumn Leaves, Leaf Structure and Function]

One of the activities associated with Teaching the Three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is “Where Does Garbage Go?” The other day I saw one of the answers—a huge landfill in the middle of what was pristine farmland. Speaking which, From Landfills to Robots describes a project in which students explored the recycling process by becoming “Wise About Waste” and involving students and their families in an interdisciplinary study. Many of us take recycling for granted these days, but as I traveled in Europe last year, I saw how recycling becomes a way of life—composting, no disposable water bottles, and people take their own bags into stores (I see more of that here, too). [SciLinks: Recycling]

The internet has changed the notion of “pen pals” with Skype in real time, no stamps to purchase, no writing paper, and no waiting for weeks for a response (although I must admit it was exciting to get an envelope in the mail). The project described in Birds Across Borders connected students in the US and Scotland in a citizen science collaboration. To the list of resources at the end, I’d add Bird Studies Canada.  Learning by Nature and Save the Boulders Beach Penguins include suggestions for getting young children involved in studying birds and their needs.  [SciLinks: Birds, Bird Adaptations]

And check out more Connections for this issue (March 2012). Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, there are ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, and other resources.

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How does a change in climate affect an environment and the organisms that live in it? This could be an essential question for an ecology or environmental science unit. Students hear a lot about climate change but may not have made the connection between changes in climate and the resulting impact on water quality, landforms, seasonal migrations, or coastlines.

Generating Arguments About Climate Change Argument in this case is not a yelling match as seen on TV or radio talk shows. Question-Response/Explanation-Evidence and Reasoning describes how to guide students through the process with activities, informational resources,    [SciLinks: Changes in Climate, Modeling Earth's Climate]

Explaining Four Earth Science Enigmas with a New Hypothesis describes the “airburst theory of an extraterrestrial object that entered the earth’s atmosphere over North America during the last Ice Age, causing fundamental changes in the Northern Hemisphere.” The article has an example of a jigsaw activity and guiding questions for students to examine several puzzling events. The authors also provide a list of resources, including their own site on the topic. The Sixth Great Mass Extinction outlines the possible causes and the results of five previous extinctions (all of which predate human activity) and discusses the current thinking about a sixth extinction occurring now. The article does not have any lesson plans per se, but the authors provide an extensive list of resources on the topic that can be integrated into many science topics. [SciLinks: Mass Extinctions]

Articles such as these and Reconstructing Environmental Change Using Lake Varves as a Climate Proxy reinforce the idea that earth science should be the capstone course in schools—integrating concepts from the life and physical sciences. This article describes how data (proxies) such as lake sediment layers (the varves of the title), annual tree rings, and ice thickness can be used to reconstruct climate patterns of the past. The authors describe a class investigation into paleoclimatology. [SciLinks: Paleontology]

Talk about a coincidence—just as I started reading Why Did the Bald Eagle Almost Become Extinct, I saw one flying over the wetlands behind my house. What a sight, as it soared over the water and landed in a tall tree, its white head gleaming in the sun. And yet it wasn’t that long ago that their future was in question. Using the activity described in this article (which includes a rubric and examples of “evidence”), students learn about the environmental factors that threatened this the existence of this bird. [SciLinks: Bird Adaptations, Bird Characteristics, Food Chains and Food Webs, Endangered Species]

Living downriver from fracking sites, I was very much interested in the article Fracking Fury. The explanation of the process, the map of shale gas locations, and the diagram of how hydraulic fracturing works are valuable resources for any teacher K-12 and for students. Although natural gas may burn cleaner than other fossil fuels, its extraction poses potentially harmful effects on the local environment.

When you pick up this month’s issue, think of the environment in terms of the outdoors. In the guest editorial Reflections on a Classroom Managed Through Inquiry: Moving Past “Nondiscipline” the author very honestly described how she has changed the classroom environment through the type of interactions with students. Most of us would probably like to meet our first year’s students and explain how we are much better teachers now!

Check out the Connections for this issue (March 2012). Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, this resource has ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.

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A teacher at a workshop once told me, “I keep my student so busy, they don’t have time to think.” I hope she was joking, because helping students learn how to engage in critical thinking—problem solving, creating, analyzing—and to develop their own strategies for self-evaluation and learning is one of the most important things we do.

Did you ever look at some students’ work and wonder What Were They Thinking? The authors of this article discuss how to design and support learning activities that will help students develop critical thinking skills: connecting to background knowledge, creating sensory images (nonlinguistic representations), determining importance (prioritizing), questioning, inquiry (problem solving, inferring, predicting, synthesizing. They provide sample lessons that teach the big picture and focus on real-world applications.

Even if you don’t have funds for elaborate materials or field trips to exotic locations, you can still Rock On! using samples of local gravel, which can be the basis of activities to foster observation and critical thinking. It was interesting that the activity was also included in a PD workshop, and teachers thought of even more ideas for extending the activity. If you want to see where an interest like this can lead, check out the Science of Sand website. [SciLinks: Rocks, Erosion]

Do we focus so much on getting the “right” answer that we overlook how to analyze our work? Does it make sense? Are You Certain? If your students do many discovery investigations, error analysis is an essential skill, and the author describes several strategies for guiding students through the process. The article includes a helpful graphic on the experimentation in science classrooms.

One aspect of critical thinking is reading between and beyond the lines to determine What’s Missing? The author of this article uses articles from the media (a list is provided) to help students indentify the environmental stories and questions hidden in the articles. She emphasizes the importance of teacher modeling how to think through the process and provides examples and a guide to writing a “thoughtful” response. She also suggests modifying the activity with cooperative learning. And I really liked her idea of using online discussions/forums.

In the classroom, teachers usually focus on what (and how much) students know. But the author of Exploring the Unknown notes that “Scientists get excited about what they don’t know” (the italics are mine). The article describes a project in which students explore real-life investigations into the classroom, not necessarily to find answers but to learn how to think like scientists. There are resources to help student learn to make scientific claims, justify them with evidence, and evaluate the quality of the evidence. (see  the SS article for more on argumentation). [Scilinks: Aquifers]

Next month is the celebration of Earth Day 2012. This article has a brief history of the event and a list of web-based resources for related activities. (see the March 2012 issue of Science & Children for more ideas).

Don’t forget to look at the Connections for this issue (March 2012). Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, this resource has ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.