Why write in science class? As Jodi Wheeler-Toppen, editor of the new NSTA Press book Science the “Write” Way, notes in her Introduction, “there are many reasons to have our students write, but the one that is most powerful for me is simple: Writing helps students learn.” Scientists write their observations and analyses and publish their work. Students can reap the same benefits that scientists do from writing, including connecting prior knowledge to new findings, organizing their ideas, and uncovering questions for further study. The November issue of NSTA’s Book Beat offers numerous resources for broadening your approach to incorporating writing in your classroom.

In this issue of Book Beat, you’ll find freebie chapters from How to Write to Learn Science, 2nd Edition; Science the “Write” Way; and Lecture-Free Teaching. Strategies and tips for teachers of English learners are included in free-chapter downloads from Science for English Language Learners and Teaching Science to English Language Learners.

This year, K–5 teachers from the Baltimore City (Maryland) Public Schools went from thinking they couldn’t teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and their students couldn’t learn it to expressing confidence in their skills and in their students’ abilities. This sea change resulted from an Elementary STEM Teacher Clinic held by STEM Master Teachers for teachers from struggling elementary schools with many high-poverty students and a predominantly African American population. The clinic provided 130 teachers from 22 schools with hands-on professional development during the summer and also with equipment, supplies, and books from the NSTA Picture-Perfect Science Lessons book collection, which contains standards-based science content and ready-to-teach lessons.

This morning in New Orleans, as part of the Urban Science Education Leadership (USEL) session, presenters from Baltimore City Public Schools described the clinic and how it transformed the teachers. One key to its success was “every teacher had a coach…having that coach is the most critical component,” said presenter Katya Denisova. When the teachers returned to school in the fall, they had the coach available in their school to help them operate software and equipment and answer their questions. Most of these teachers “had not been exposed to teaching rigorous STEM,” she pointed out. By the end of the clinic, however, their self-assessments showed they greatly increased their knowledge of and skills in scientific inquiry.

Presenter Linda Evans declared, “How great is it to see the kids actually touching things and doing things [in class]!” She said the curriculum was based on Common Core state standards, “infusing literature and using [Picture-Perfect Science Lessons] as the anchor” to “push in STEM, touch on all those content areas.”

Adren Kornegay of Baltimore’s Garrett Heights Elementary Middle School said the curriculum “hit all four of the types of science,” and engaged students as young as kindergarteners in engineering design challenges. Kindergarteners developed a recycling program; second graders designed habitats for hermit crabs and worms; fifth graders created wind turbines. Terrell Davis of Montebello Elementary Junior Academy said even the fifth graders enjoyed the curriculum’s picture books, which helped them “relate to the [STEM] concepts.”

Then the presenters gave the attendees some supplies and turned them loose to explore a motion-and-force activity related to the book Sheep in a Jeep. Groups of three teachers created ramps and rolled a tiny plastic sheep in a plastic jeep down them, then measured how far the sheep traveled. Just as their students would do, they varied the heights and lengths of the ramps and tried using sandpaper to see how it would affect the jeep’s motion. This “inquiry allows students to think for themselves,” observed presenter Evelyn Tolliver. Her students “connected all the ramps and were rolling cars across the classroom,” she said, smiling.

Denisova mentioned that the attendees and other K–5 teachers around the country could take advantage of the clinic’s curriculum, even though they won’t be in the next cohort. “We want you to be STEM advocates,” said Evans. “A lot of our elementary teachers are not comfortable with the content…They really do need support.”

Making connections

Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry, authors of the popular Picture-Perfect Science Lessons Series, led a lively group of teachers in exploring classroom strategies and lessons that combine science with reading in the elementary grades. The Picture-Perfect Science

Roller coaster activity

Preconference Workshop at the New Orleans NSTA Area Conference included activities highlighting reading strategies like making connections, questioning, visualizing, determining importance, and synthesizing. Morgan and Ansberry focused also on the powerful BSCS 5E lesson model, which Morgan credited with transforming her science teaching. In the engage phase of one lesson, workshop participants heard Morgan read Marla Frazee’s children’s book Roller Coaster and shared their own experiences with riding a roller coaster. During the explore phase, they tested ways to change the speed and direction of a rolling object by building roller coasters out of pipe insulation. From exploring mystery objects inside small film canisters, to configuring a loop-to-loop for a model roller coaster and utilizing key reading strategies, the workshop participants shared some laughs while learning new ways to combine reading and science in engaging lessons for students in grades 3-6.  On a picture-perfect day in New Orleans, these workshop participants and their facilitators departed the session with new insights and strategies for transforming their own classrooms for science learning. To read more about Picture-Perfect Science and clever ways to combine science learning with reading, download the PDF “Why Read Picture Books in Science Class?”, a free e-book containing the introductory five chapters of Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, 2nd Edition.

Our district has a goal for every teacher to reinforce student literacy skills. We’re struggling with this at the secondary level. Most of our students seem to have decent reading levels, and the reading specialists provide extra help for those who need it. So what can we do in science classes to improve student literacy?
—Hailey, Richmond, VA

You’re fortunate that your students are reading at or near grade level. However, in addition to sentences and paragraphs, the typical science textbook is full of colorful diagrams, photographs, flowcharts, graphs, maps, tables, and sidebars. Many of these (including animated versions) are also found in online or electronic resources. All of these are (or should be) correlated with the text: to visually represent the information, to provide additional information, to present information hard to express in words (e.g., maps or diagrams), or to illustrate how concepts are related.

Students are challenged to interpret visuals as they read informational text. Some textbooks make things even more challenging for students—referring to a graphic on a different page or using different vocabulary in the graphic. Do your students really understand the purpose of visuals and know how to make sense of them? Perhaps your school’s goal could be adapted for visual literacy in science.

The May 2011 edition of The Reading Teacher has an excellent article by Erin M. McTigue and Amanda C. Flowers on this topic. In “Science Visual Literacy: Learners’ Perceptions and Knowledge of Diagrams,”  the authors describe their efforts to understand student perceptions of visuals and how students interpret them. The study used elementary students, but I suspect some of their findings could apply to secondary students (what a great topic for a thesis or action research!). A membership in the International Reading Association is required to access the issue, so I’ll summarize their findings here. (The reading specialists in your school may have a copy.)

Students from grades 6–8 responded to four different graphic representations of the water cycle, copied from a popular science textbook series. Among their findings, the authors noted students “sometimes” or “rarely” looked at the diagrams in their textbooks and reported that the only function of the diagram was to visually represent what was in the text. Students often misinterpreted the structure of the visuals. For example, the authors shared an interview with a younger student who described the use of arrows as a way to point out interesting information on a graphic of the water cycle, not to depict movement or directionality.

The article suggests several strategies for teachers:

• Model for students how to interpret a graphic, using a think-aloud to describe your thought processes.
• Assess student knowledge of graphics through think-alouds or questions that probe their interpretations. The authors provide an interview protocol teachers can use to gauge students understanding of diagrams.
• Provide multiple representations of the same object, such as a photograph and a diagram. Help students compare and contrast what can be learned from each. (I’m reminded of the ongoing discussions among birdwatchers of the merits of line drawings vs. photographs in field guides to assist with identification).

Creating visuals is another aspect of visual literacy often used in science classes—drawing and labeling diagrams, organizing data into tables, graphing, and using graphic organizers. Knowing more about the purpose of visuals may help students make better choices when they create web pages, presentations, or videos.

Additional suggestions from the authors can be found in the article Visual Literacy in Science in the July 2010 issue of Science Scope.

This article has four brief lessons introducing students to the concept of visual literacy. These could be complementary to the “textbook tour” many teachers use to point out the purpose of text structures such as the headings and subheadings, sidebars, and summaries. This type of instruction is important, especially in the middle years, as students make the transition from “learning to read” using stories to ”reading to learn” from informational text.

If your principal needs extra convincing of the importance of visual literacy, you could cite the authors’ note that more than half of the questions on standardized tests required students to interpret graphical representations. Although helping students with visual literacy will have a far greater impact than test scores.

I have addressed other questions related to literacy in previous columns: Boosting Science Vocabulary and Science and Reading.

Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/43503694@N00/2876561266/

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.”

—Chinese Proverb

A team of science educators has developed a new NSTA position statement acknowledging the value of 21st-century skills within the context of science education (available here). The statement advocates for the science education community to support 21st-century skills consistent with best practices across a science education system and notes that “exemplary science education can offer a rich context for developing many 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and information literacy.”

With the first decade of the 21st century already in the rear view mirror, it is somewhat interesting-for several reasons-to still be considering what we call 21st century skills. Like it or not, the 21st century is already 11% over, and yet 21st century skills discussions are couched as if 1) there is a really a choice, and 2) the 21st century is still to come.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to consider the challenges to traditional education when calendar pages all over the globe flipped from 1899 to 1900, or in this case, to 1911.

Some of the notable events of the first 11 percent of the 20th century include:

• The first Nobel Prizes are awarded
• The first Trans-Atlantic Radio Signal
• Einstein proposes his theory of Relativity
• The first electric washing machine
• Ford begins selling the Model T
• Plastic is invented
• Peary is first to reach North Pole
• The air conditioner is invented
• Blériot flew his monoplane across the English Channel
• Rutherford discovers structure of the atom
• Raymonde de Laroche was the first woman to receive a pilot’s license
• Amundsen reaches the South Pole
• The first talking motion picture is demonstrated

Digested, this list indicates we drive cars, human flight is obvious, instant global communication is possible, we have a serious challenge to Newton, the guts of an atom are known, and we have stood on the extreme reaches of our planet. In essence, kids, everything from here on out will be much different than anything known before. Ever.

Two years before the first moon landing, Marshall McLuhan penned the following: “Today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment, where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects and schedules.”

Now lets jump ahead a few decades to see how the 20th century skills played out. But what were the skills of the last century? I’m not sure, however the students of that era either dealt with, discovered, or invented some big ticket things like world wars, the great depression, electrification, antibiotics, the atomic bomb, x-rays, television, telephones, jet flight, radar, vaccines, computers, the moon landing, the internet, and cell phones, just to name a few of the thousands of new additions to society. Not an insignificant list compared with our list that includes iPods, Facebook, eBay, YouTube, video chat and digital books. Sure, I know there are greater things to point a finger at for examples of 21st century change, but as governments fall and rise, the revolutions of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and soon (my guess) Google Earth should hardly be surprising. If you recall, Thomas Jefferson did once say, “Information is the currency of democracy.” And if there is anything the above list of web-based tech shouts out, its information.

So were people in 1911 concerned that the education system was failing to teach the skills necessary to be a productive citizen in the new century? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But there are plenty quotes from education experts of the time expounding upon the perils and pitfalls of our current public school trajectory. For example, in the first half of the last century John Dewey wrote, “Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.” Wow, John, that sure sounds a lot like our 21^st century skillset.

However, what I do believe is different in the 21st century is the acknowledgement that we can only use today cautiously to predict tomorrow. Further, the skills expected of high school graduates are not limited to those of content, but also must include a flexible, fluid, dynamic attitude that integrates well with any situation the student may encounter. Oh, and the student will encounter situations unlike any generations previous.

What the 21st century has taught us thus far, very much like the first decade of the 20th century, is that inventions and institutions are not much more than suggestions. And to think otherwise is to place too much faith in stasis. As NSTA solicits input about 21st century skills, something should feel familiar about the topic. In the draft position statement, the following list is provided including: core subject knowledge; learning and innovation skills; information, media, and technology skills; life and career skills; adaptability; complex communication/social skills; nonroutine problem solving; self- management/self-development; and systems thinking.

Sounds an awful lot like the processes of science to me. And what’s not to like about that?

Actually, there is something. It’s subtle, but we have longed for predictability in education, and now it seems we are attempting to encapsulate unpredictability into a predictable program with defined outcomes.

My worry here is that we might be using the same piece of 20th century educational practice that concerned McLuhanin in order to package and sell the concept of 21st century skills. As Dewey foretold, the future is not a destination where one arrives and the story ends. And similarly, 21st century skills are not a finite set of testable proficiencies. Instead they are goals of direction and objectives of strategy. As we race against the clock to capture and cage the skills of the 21^st century, let’s not incarcerate them, for once in captivity they might fail to thrive. The skills will need to roam in the wild if they are truly going to make a difference.

“Only when we know a little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Karen Wood

I’ve been hearing a lot about science notebooks lately, so I went to the Education Development Center’s Pathway Session on Establishing Science Notebook Habits and Skills. It was interesting to hear each presenter’s unique take on the science notebook and see all of the student examples they displayed.

Fifth-grade teacher Karen Wood said structured journals work best with her fifth graders, who typically don’t have a lot of exposure to science. I was shocked to hear that only a handful of her students each year have had any science at all.

Dean Martin

Dean Martin, science specialist for grades 3-5 in the Boston Public Schools, uses a “dual notebook structure” combining free writing with specific questions to explore. With students who have difficulty expressing themselves in writing, he adapts the notebook by letting them take digital photos and write captions. To help kids who think they can’t draw, he provides a few simple drawing lessons to build their confidence, while assuring them that their drawings need not be perfect.

Lori Fulton

Lori Fulton of Jay Jeffers Elementary School in Las Vegas, Nevada, says many of her kindergarteners are English Language Learners, so writing is hard for them. So they work on creating pictures for their notebooks first, then learn how to label the pictures. With older students, she advises not overemphasizing conclusions and encouraging students to describe their observations.

Audience members asked the presenters about how they helped their students make real-world connections using their notebooks and how to determine whether what students put in the notebook represented accurate understanding.

I was talking to a first time attendee on the trolley from the hotel to the convention center this morning. Cecelia Dygdon told me the web site was overwhelming, she found a lot of sessions she wanted to attend, but didn’t immediately realize they were spread out between the convention center and a couple nearby hotels. She was headed to the first time attendee meeting, so I’m sure she’ll get some great advice from the folks there.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons Seashells are multifunctional. In addition to housing and protecting an organisim, they can be used to spark scientific curiosity and literacy.

Cecelia describes herself as a career-changer, having worked in industry for several years after teaching for a short time after college. She’s now a high school chemistry and physical science teacher in the Chicago, Illinois area. She says she came to the conference because “it’s good for me to hone my skills. I really need to relearn things; not just content but pedagogy.” Cecelia is in the Department of Education’s ACTS program.

The first session I planned to attend was packed to overflowing. I couldn’t even get close to the door! Apparently a lot of educators got up this morning with Differentiated Science Inquiry on their minds.

Good thing I had another session in mind as an alternative, Connect the Dots to Help Students Develop Literacy Skills Along with Science Content. Karen Ostlund shared how she has incorporated literacy into scientific exploration for sea shells. Hands-on activities for the participants, and examples of student work illustrated her methods well. Interesting fact I learned in the session this morning—shell colors are like a “memory,” recording changes to the mollusk’s environment.

Consider the facility that students have with electronic communications and games. They somehow had to “learn” how to use these tools and figure out the rules and strategies of the games. But I heard some teachers talking about how “students do not want to learn.” The evidence the teachers had for their statement was their observation that “Students don’t do their assignments.”

But I wonder what the connection is between a student’s desire to learn and the tasks we require of them. How do we choose or design learning activities that will build on students’ prior knowledge, experiences, skills, and strengths while meeting their needs? Do we as teachers ever provide students with any choices or input into what they are learning and how they learn?

Although teachers may provide a variety of activities, several articles in this issue show a structured and systematic design can lead to increased student engagement and learning. Unit Pages: Differentiation for Students describes how students can be scaffolded into taking more responsibility for their learning. Differentiation Through Choice has examples of a strategy called a “think-tac-toe” which provides students with several alternatives to demonstrate their learning. (I’ve also seen this strategy described as a “choice board.”) Check out the websites of Carol Tomlinson  for more on differentiation and Kathie Nunley for more on layered curriculum.

Other articles in this issue describe how to support middle-schoolers as they use inquiry and literacy processes: Getting Students to be Successful, Independent Investigators and Science & Literacy: Tools for Life. Other articles look at the use of commercial video games, visual formative assessments, webquests, photographic scavenger hunts, and how to restructure group  discussions more equitably.

The February 2010 issue of Educational Leadership from ASCD also has several articles related to differentiation. Most require a subscription, but there are two that are available to all: What Research Says About Differentiated Learning and From Apathy to Mastery

And don’t forget that with SciLinks you can find a variety of resources to tap into student interests and skill levels.

Wikis have been called ”the quintessential collaborative tool.” In this article from the February 2010 issue of NSTA Reports, you’ll find out how teachers around the country are using wikis to collaborate with colleagues around the world, as well as to communicate with students and parents.

Do you have a wiki? Tell us about yours, and how you use it to enhance your teaching.