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Tag Archives: assessment
Science in the community
I’m hoping that secondary teachers will take a look at the articles that describe authentic investigations conducted by young scientists in their communities: Creative Soil Conservation and Boulder Creek Study. The latter has examples of student work as they studied the water quality in their communities, using various indicators, including the presence of aquatic invertebrates. [...]
Posted in SciLinks Also tagged anatomy, community, Earth science, earthquakes, engineering, environmental science, invertebrates, outdoors, plants, vertebrates, weather 1 comment
Formative assessments
I’m looking for suggestions for formative assessments. Do you have some unique ideas to assess students quickly and adjust instruction accordingly?
—Karen, Arizona
Formative assessments are ongoing, classroom level assessments critical to discovering what students are learning during the instructional process so we can move on (if students have learned a topic) or revisit our instruction to [...]
Magnifiers
Did I tell you how happy I was to see the returning three-year old students use magnifiers appropriately? Because this half-day preschool for 2-5-year-olds had moved to a new space over the summer, the “usual place” for everything had to be determined. It is one thing to design a preschool in a set of rooms [...]
What science should we teach in early childhood?
I’m interested in your opinions on what should be included in early childhood science standards. We don’t want to underestimate the abilities of young children to understand relationships in natural systems, nor overestimate their ability to understand the concepts of a “fair” test or the importance of collecting data. Many states have early learning standards, [...]
Thinking BIG, Learning BIG: Summer reading becomes September’s lesson plans
July is a distant memory of 6am wake up calls for my high-schooler who took PE over the summer, balanced with my getting more than five minutes of peace and quiet—time to read about early childhood and science, to think my own thoughts and get hungry for conversation. Summer school is a wonderful thing and [...]
Posted in Early Years Also tagged activity ideas, early childhood, integrated, resources, standards 1 comment
Showing the science: using children’s work to document your program
Digital photography changed the way I do science with my students. I reflect more on what has happened and what is being left out as I look over the photos, in moments after school, at home on the computer. I have this luxury as a parent of older children who are themselves busy on the [...]
When does science become significant?
Math and Science in Preschool: Policies and Practice, a National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) Preschool Policy Brief, says that teachers usually do not plan and support science and math learning in pre-K. How does that happen when young children are so curious about the world and so interested in who has more, is [...]
Raise your hand if you’re a scientist!
I received the greatest compliment while sitting at the lunch table with a mixed age group of my students who are enrolled in the end-of-school-year camp. The children were playing a conversation-starter game they’ve developed of asking the lunchers to raise their hand if they fall into the named group (have a red lunch box, have [...]
Experiences with nature
Although I credit my early childhood exposure to orchard, field, woods, and creek as the foundation for my understanding of the natural world, I would despair if I thought that same understanding is lost to children who grow up in urban, constructed places, or mostly indoors. My father told of swimming in Wissahickon Creek, a Schuylkill River tributary, [...]
Peering into students’ “private universe”