Thank you Council for Elementary Science and APAST, SEPA, the NSTA Committee on Preschool-Elementary Science Teaching, and Science and Children for the “Elementary Extravaganza”! (Click here, then scroll down to see photos.) Well before 8am science educators were lining up to get into the ballroom where each one (of ~ 100) tables was a different presenter ready to share a lesson plan, cool idea, student work, or product, and enter into a discussion as deep as you wanted to go. Thank you for the combined efforts that supported and created such an awesome concentration of professional development–we did indeed “Walk away with a head full of ideas and arms filled with materials.” Each person who attended got a sturdy carry-bag made of recycled materials, and a jump drive, and many won door prizes. What a fun and productive way to spend the first 1.5 hours of a conference morning. If you weren’t able to make it, you can still access some of the material.

I passed out copies of the journal Young Children, generously donated by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, my other professional association. In the March 2012 issue the NAEYC Early Childhood Science Interest Forum is introduced, and there are several features focusing on science in this all-around excellent issue.

What didn’t I see at the “Elementary Extravaganza”? What did I miss? Go to the  Elementary Extravaganza session listing on the NSTA Indianapolis Conference page to download the presenters information sheets.

Here are photos (click on a photo for a link) to share what I saw. Comment below to add information about your table or another favorite.

And each person who attended got a sturdy carry-bag made of recycled materials, and a jump drive, and many won door prizes. What a fun and productive way to spend the first 1.5 hours of the morning,

Peggy

Hundreds of teachers were eager to hear more about the Framework for the Next Generation Science Standards from NSTA Executive Director Francis Eberle and Stephen Pruitt of Achieve, Inc.

This morning’s session on the Framework for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) drew quite a crowd. In addition to the people sitting and standing around the periphery, I saw a number of educators standing in the hallway just outside the door.

Some attendees posed questions, ranging from the inclusion of controversial topics in the NGSS to how assessment of students and states’ adoption of the standards will be conducted to coordination between the NGSS and the framework for technology and engineering.

Stephen Pruitt, vice president for content, research, and development at Achieve, Inc., encouraged audience members to participate in the public review of the standards’ draft, expected to be released in late April or May. Read more about the NGSS and the framework.

Table of Contents

The other evening, as I was out walking, I noticed that the moon seemed exceptionally bright. I took out my binoculars and spent a few minutes gazing at the craters on the full moon. What a sight! Learning about and appreciating the relationship between the Earth, Sun, and Moon can be a lifelong interest. The elementary years are the first (and, unfortunately for many students, the last) school-based experiences they have with the topic.

Seeing the Moon focuses on the most famous features of our moon—the craters. The article includes an activity that simulates impact craters. The formative assessment probe described in The Daytime Moon uncovers student misconceptions about the moon and would be a good introduction to a unit on the moon. [SciLinks: Moon Phases]

What Causes the Tides? As a SciLinks reviewer, one of the first sites I reviewed (and declined) stated that tides come in the morning and go out in the evening. It’s not hard to understand how people who have never experiences tidal activity can develop misconceptions or incomplete understandings. This article is a quick primer on this phenomenon. While you’re on the subject of gravity, Gravity and Weight has two activities to help students explore the concept. [SciLinks: Tides, Gravity]

Shadows are fascinating to students and are related to the position of the Sun. Shadow Play describes a unit of study in which students investigated the relationship between shadows and seasons. The activities make use of the Starry Night software, but other Internet resources are suggested (such as the Stelllarium website). Child’s Play also has an activity related to shadows. [SciLinks: Light]

Can 4th-graders take on an engineering project? The students in the article Landing Safely on Mars did just that as they built models of Mars landers. This was not the typical craft stick model—the twist here was that the “landers” were dropped off the school roof to the ground below. Would the contents survive the “landing?” The activity also included connections to language arts as students wrote about their designs and created their own nonfiction books on the topic.  [SciLinks: Exploring Mars]

Collegiality and Better Science Teaching describes the implementation of a professional learning community and how one could be started elsewhere. If your PLC is interested in resources for teaching Earth and space science, Reach for the Stars! describes the resources that NSTA and NASA have for background knowledge and professional development on the topic.

Is a Mealworm Really a Worm? describes a model for a scaffolding process for science notebooks with younger students (Inquiry-Modeling-Sharing-Collaborative-Independent). I liked the checklist that documents the progression the students make on key organization skills tracked over several weeks. What would this model look like for other science topics? [SciLinks: Metamorphosis, Insects]

In her Early Years blog, Peggy Ashbrook has additional thoughts and resources on the topic. And check out more Connections for this issue (January 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.

Happy New Year! This year I look forward to more conversation in the early childhood community about science education.

The January 2012 Early Years column adapts an activity about making craters from Marie Faust Evitt’s book, Thinking BIG, Learning BIG. Craters on the Moon are visible without a telescope, even in daytime, a time when teachers can point out the Moon to their students. Children enjoy making craters in snow, damp sand, or other fine material, by dropping balls of varying sizes and weights into the material. There are many ways to use imaginative play to allow children to explore the topic of Space, and the ideas they have already learned through media and at home. Some of what we learn as children (Think of “The cow jumped over the Moon”) may lead to misconceptions that, if teachers learn of them through conversation, we can help students replace with accurate information. Simply talking about the accurate information will not correct misconceptions, but through activities and discussion students can discard them.

Learn more about the Moon and its relationship to the Earth and Sun by using some of the resources in the National Science Teachers Association’s Learning Center such as the a collection of resources I created titled “Moon and sky—observations.” Register at no cost, go to Advanced Search and enter Keyword: Moon, Author: Ashbrook, and Type of Learning Resource: User created collections (select in both menus) to see resources in the “Moon and sky—observations” collection. Photos of features of the Moon can be viewed on GeologyRocks site by Dr. Katie Davis and Dr. Jon Hill.

Young children may know the word “gravity” but we don’t expect them to understand yet that it is a force between any two objects and that it pulls the objects together. In the case of the Earth and the objects on it, the gravitational pull of the Earth on the objects is greatest, so objects are pulled down to the Earth (ground). The January 2012 Teaching Through Tradebooks column, “Gravity and Weight”, by Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry uses the 5E Learning Cycle in activities for grades K-2 and 3-5. These authors are sometimes referred to affectionately as “The Picture-Perfect ladies” because their “Picture-Perfect Science” books are very helpful to elementary teachers (note that the picture trade books they suggest are available through NSTA).

The article “Shadow Play” by Kathy Cabe-Trundle and Margilee P. Hilson is free to all—read about how students can observe shadows to learn about seasonal change. I recommend reading it (even if some of the activities are too advanced for your class) to see the authors’ approach to teaching concepts about which students commonly have misconceptions. I find the articles for older students a useful review of concepts at an elementary level, for myself.

Let me know what your plans are for the New Year, and what you’d like to see discussed on this Early Years blog by commenting below. Best wishes for the new year,

Peggy

I recently talked with a high school senior who wants to become an elementary teacher. “Working with younger students, one thing I won’t have to think about is technology,” she said. She certainly has some misconceptions about elementary students! I thought about her as I read this issue of Science and Children and the examples of young students using technology for many tasks and in many contexts.

Space and technology seem to go hand in hand. To the Moon and Back show how students in Grades 2 and 3 used the Starry Night resource to gather data on phases of the moon and look for patterns and develop questions. The article includes a rubric, an example of a student journal entry, and a discussion of other technology application on the topic, including iPad/iPhone apps and online simulations. [SciLinks: Moon Phases]

The authors of Caught on Video use videos to document student projects. Students were both the subjects and the videographers as they demonstrated their work. The article has suggestions for incorporating more local videos in instruction. [SciLinks: Engineering Structures]

“No child left inside” could be the subtitle for Trail Blazers. The article describes a project in which 4^th-graders created field guides (on iPods) for the school’s nature trail. Starting with a site study, they also created kits for teachers to use with students to study weather on the trail. [SciLinks: Identifying Trees, Nature]

What technology (if any) is appropriate for primary students? Harness Your Tech Side includes resources from the NAEYC on technology integration in the younger grades and a lesson plan on using technology to create a class book. Smart Boards Rock has pictures of students (not the teacher) at the board, manipulating objects and words. [SciLinks: Rocks]

Virtual Inquiry Experiences incorporated technology into a study of pond insects. Students shared their specimens with scientists who shared (through videoconferencing) the use of an electron microscope—quite an experience for these young students. Another option for younger students as described in Time for Slime, is a digital microscope connected to a projector. The pictures of students show the benefits of  the large projected images. The formative assessment probe Representing Microscopic Life looks at student conceptions and misconceptions about microscope pond organisms. [SciLinks: Microscopes, Insects, Protozoa]

Classroom communications is changing, too. Not an Unfeasible “Extra” shows how students in 4^th grade are blogging about their science learning. The teacher-author offers suggestions for starting a blogging project and a rubric to assess the blog content. In Turtles and Technology, other 4^th graders took on a challenge to protect and advocate for an endangered species. They raised turtles to release in the wild used a variety of technology (blogging, producing videos, creating webpages, and even developing an online game) to inform the community of threats to the turtles.

After reading and reflecting on these articles, future elementary teachers have a lot to look forward to, with students who are very comfortable with technology. Secondary teachers have a lot to look forward to, also, as younger students become more familiar with technology as a tool for learning, communicating, and creating.

Several other articles have SciLinks connections: One Hungry Dinosaur  [SciLinks: Dinosaurs] and Simple Machines [SciLinks: Simple Machines] And check out more Connections for this issue (December 2011). 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.

Some bits and pieces gleaned from listserves, blogs, and tweets–

Professional development

• 10 Amazing Free Online Computer Science Classes from Stanford University.  Each class is open to the public and is taught by a Stanford professor. Non-Stanford students do not get academic credit, but certificates are awarded as a document of participation. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have more courses like this with science content for teachers or advanced students? Add a comment if you know of other universities that have such online programs that are free.

Science and multimedia

• Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) has a Periodic Table of Podcasts—one for each elements (transcripts are available, too).
• Virtual Microscope from the University of Delaware. Students can practice and learn outside of class, during downtime in the classroom, or if you have to share microscopes.

Visual literacy

• Students’ doodles may indicate learning rather than boredom. See how Doodling May Draw Students Into Science
• Do you need maps for your classroom? Would students find it helpful to have maps in their science notebooks? The National Map website lets you create maps on various themes, download  topographic maps, and access topo maps from as far back as the late 1800s to do comparison studies.

Real-world applications

• Kitchen Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) explores chemistry concepts related to food and food preparation.
• Also check out the Science of Cooking from the Exploratorium. (But remember that eating in the lab is not a safe practice.)

Photo: MLB – Central Park, NYC

Being part of a military family, Veterans Day holds special significance for me. Members of my family have served in the Coast Guard, Navy, and Army. Wherever I am on Veterans Day, I seek out a way to reflect on the sacrifices and accomplishments of the men and women who serve in our armed forces. This year I had occasion to visit The National WWII Museum while in New Orleans for the National Science Teachers Association area conference. The scope of the exhibition galleries in this 11-year-old museum is overwhelming; the curators and historians took care to present an overview of the war in all theatres, with special emphasis on the amphibious invasions or D-Days. Moving from gallery to gallery, visitors see large-scale illustrations of battles across continents side by side with small objects soldiers carried and brought home, such as the metallic “cricket” clickers paratroopers used to signal one another in the French countryside. A soldier’s bullet-punctured helmet is displayed not far from a pocket Bible, carried by a Marine into battle in the Solomon Islands. In one gallery that focused on the war effort at home, I saw my reasons for being in New Orleans and at the museum come together in a compelling look at science and engineering that helped win World War II.

The exhibit supplies a summary of “Some Wartime Scientific and Technical Advances” that included the Jeep, high-octane gasoline, Teflon, synthetic cortisone, the electron microscope, and M&M’s. Penicillin, discovered and developed in 1928, was moved into mass production during the war, a boon to battlefield medicine. An engineering marvel that contributed greatly to the U.S.’s ability to ferry troops efficiently from sea to land was the Higgins landing craft, invented by Andrew Jackson Higgins of New Orleans. Higgins Industries and its affiliates manufactured more than 20,000 of these boats, which facilitated swifter landings of troops and equipment around the world. General Dwight Eisenhower is said to have called Higgins “the man who won the war for us.”

Another feature of this gallery is discussion of the extensive programs of conservation, salvage, and recycling the American public participated in to aid the war effort. In addition to adhering to rationing programs, Americans delivered tin foil, metal, used cooking oil, and nylon stockings to collection centers. These salvaged materials could be repurposed into shells, parachutes, and explosives. A gallery sign notes the salvage yields of some household items: 30,000 razor blades could yield 50 .30-caliber machine guns. And 30 lipstick cases could yield 20 ammunition cartridges.

As I moved through the museum, gaining a deeper understanding of World War II, I reflected on the American ingenuity and inventiveness that fueled many of the Allies’ strategies. Today’s military embodies this spirit of invention, continuously improving technology and equipment and advancing medical practice to improve care for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In “With STEM, Almost Everything Is Possible,” Debra Shapiro writes of a remarkable advance in prosthetics research announced at the New Orleans NSTA conference by Colonel Geoffrey Ling, program manager for the Defense Science Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

As a student of science and of history, I could not have asked for more from my New Orleans experience this Veterans Day.  For a glimpse inside the NSTA conference, be sure to browse the NSTA Blog entries from New Orleans. For a virtual visit to The National WWII Museum, visit their website. Teachers and students should visit The National WWII Museum’s website “Science & Technology of World War II” for cool lessons and activities like “Moon Phases and Tides in Planning the D-Day Invasion,” “Waves, Sonar, and Radar” and “Send a Coded Message.”

– The Scientific Process
Berkeley’s Understanding Science website is a great resource for learning more about the process of science.  The resource goes much deeper than the standard “PHEOC” model of the scientific method by emphasizing peer review, the testing of ideas, a science flowchart, and “what is science?” checklist. http://undsci.berkeley.edu/
Understanding Science also provides a variety of teaching resources including case studies of scientific discoveries and lesson plans for every grade level. http://undsci.berkeley.edu/teaching/index.php

– From AAAS Science NetLinks
Science Netlinks provides hundreds of reviewed lessons and other resources keyed to science topics.  Many of the lessons use engaging news stories about current science discoveries.  This month’s Science NetLinks newsletter highlights resources for UNESCO’s International Literacy Day (9/8), United Nations’ Ozone Day (9/16), and the World Heart Federation’s World Heart Day (9/28). http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/news/news_sept2011.php

– Science Spotlight
“In an effort to help preserve endangered rhinos and primates, biologists have converted skin cells taken from the animals into pluripotent stem cells, which can grow into nearly anything, given the right conditions. They might even grow into egg and sperm cells, eventually, the researchers think, suggesting a cell biological route to conservation.” http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/09/06/stem-cells-from-skin-suggest-a-way-save-endangered-rhinos-and-primates/