The experts address the following question in this month’s column: Are fish sensitive to lightning that strikes water?
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Where do you turn when you have a bad hair day or need to cover up an unwanted blemish? From hair gels to concealers, cosmetic chemists use science and creativity to develop products that make us look and feel good. As the executive director of Chanel’s Research and Development Formulation Laboratories, cosmetic chemist Amy Wyatt finds it exciting and rewarding to create useful, safe, and appealing personal care and pampering products.
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This issue of The Science Teacher (TST) represents our 13^th consecutive annual issue devoted to the theme “Science for All.” The theme serves as an umbrella for ideas and strategies to mitigate academic achievement gaps associated with ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, physical disabilities, limited English language ability, and learning differences. Ideas for reaching out to underrepresented groups are more important now than ever, as our classrooms become increasingly diverse. Despite some gains, significant disparities in achievement are still a major challenge for educators and schools.
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Students with learning disabilities (LD) frequently take general education science classes because their disabilities are very mild. Sometimes, however, it is difficult for students with LD to succeed in the classes and pass the related high-stakes assessments mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this article, the author reviews typical LD characteristics that interfere with science instruction and then presents classroom modifications that are critical for students with LD and may also be valuable for all students.
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Unlike the vocabulary used in language arts and social studies, knowledge of expository text (text written to inform) and the language of science are required for reading and writing in science (Carrier 2005). This vocabulary, along with expository text structures, often is not taught in middle and high school classrooms, thus hindering students, and especially English language learners (ELLs), from gaining the knowledge and skills required to handle the increasing factual load in science classes. This article describes how the authors use a modified sentence completion task to teach students about the language of science.
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The Science Beliefs Quiz contains items related to biology, physical science, and Earth/space science. The entire test is available free to teachers on the internet and consists of 47 declarative statements that were taken either from the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) or previous studies involving various misconceptions or alternative conceptions in science.
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It is a passion for students’ authentic engagement in science that influenced the author’s decision to heed the Utah State Office of Education’s (USOE) call for test writers at a professional workshop last summer. The workshop offered science teachers across the state of Utah the opportunity to craft test items used in Utah’s state assessment, the Utah Criterion Referenced Tests. These test items capture the extent to which students are learning the Utah Core Curriculum (USOE 2003). He saw the USOE workshop as a chance to help shape items that would measure the kind of learning that is embedded in the lives of students and centers on inquiry experiences.
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First-year physics students often have a difficult time grasping Newton’s laws of motion and recognizing the forces that these laws depend on. The “Paper Car” project is an experiential activity that is rich in application of force principles. It is also simple enough that students are able to integrate straightforward but non-trivial physics concepts they have learned in class. With some teacher guidance, students gain a much deeper understanding of forces and begin to see how physics principles can be used to aid in the design of real objects.
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Amy Bower is a physical oceanographer and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts—she has also been legally blind for 14 years. Through her partnership with the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the oldest K-12 school for the visually impaired in the United States, students have the unique opportunity to learn from a practicing research scientist who shares their particular disability. This article describes their collaborative project called OceanInsight, which provides visually impaired students with an interactive way to study oceanography, including field trips to Woods Hole and school visits by Bower and other WHOI scientists.
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Each of these outstanding selections defies the traditional image of a child “curling up with a good book.” Yes, they can be a source of great personal reading, encouraging students of all ages to stretch their skills and their imagination as they interact with the printed page. But these journeys of the scientific imagination seldom end with the final chapter. They have the capacity to draw the reader out from that cozy seat and into the natural world—to observe, investigate, and continue the process of discovery that has characterized scientists from Aristotle to Hawking. The adventures begin here.
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Although perceived as having a lower level of safety issues compared to chemistry or biology laboratories, Earth-space science and geology classes have their share of challenges. In fact, a number of safety concerns exist, which need to be addressed for a safe and educational experience in the geology laboratory. The following “starter” list addresses safety issues to consider with regard to common geology laboratory activities and fieldwork, as well as how to deal with other issues.
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Teachers have many dilemmas when it comes to assessing a classroom of diverse students. Teachers need to find out what students really know while being fair to all students. They also need to learn how to alter assessments without watering down content. These challenges can be addressed by following five principles for equitable assessment. In this article, the authors describe the “McCes, Sounds Like Success” equity framework. They provide practical examples along with commentary from secondary preservice teachers who participated in a course through which they learned about and applied the framework.
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As the teacher, you need to respond to students with very low-reading abilities, help all students learn how to learn from text, structure class to encourage student reading, and hold students accountable for assignments. Some effective, research-based strategies that are beneficial to all students are featured in this month’s column. The payback comes later when you spend a little less time lecturing and a little more time directly helping students learn.
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Stories weave common elements of the nature of science between topics and activities, regardless of whether it’s short historical narratives about scientists or current event articles that are read. Stories also can help students realize the important contributions of persons of color, women, and other traditionally underrepresented groups. In this article, the author discusses how to use stories to engage students in both scientific inquiry and the nature of science. By incorporating stories into the science classroom, students are transformed from a group of passive learners into a community of active scientists.
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