Too often, students enter our classrooms with insufficient knowledge of physical science. As a result, they have a difficult time understanding content in texts, lectures, and laboratory activities. This lack of background knowledge can have an impact on their ability to ask questions and wonder—both key components of inquiry. In this article, the authors demonstrate the impact that building background knowledge through wide reading can have on student achievement. They also identify a number of reasons why wide reading is not commonly used in the classroom and how to address those concerns.
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Medical diagnostics help us evaluate a range of disorders, such as cancer and infectious diseases. In the United States and other developed countries, doctors have access to advanced equipment and laboratories that provide reliable diagnoses. As a result, when we are sick, we feel confident that we will get the treatment we need. Unfortunately, for many developing countries around the world, these kinds of resources do not exist. The Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH)—an international nonprofit that designs health technologies such as vaccines and diagnostics specifically for developing countries—is one organization working to change this imbalance. As a medical diagnostics scientist at PATH, Bernhard Weigl develops inexpensive, portable, user-friendly diagnostics that provide fast and reliable test results. His tools help communities with minimal health care resources get proper care and treatment.
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The ability to read and write should be a baseline expectation for all. In the modern world, competent reading and writing is only the beginning of true literacy. Our students must now be competent in multiple “literacies”: technological, media, scientific, quantitative, and so on. True literacy involves the ability to think critically about “text”—whatever its form. With information available as never before, deciding what to do with that information—how we choose, process, and think critically about it—is an important skill that our students need.
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Gel electrophoresis is one of the most important tools used in molecular biology and has facilitated the entire field of genetic engineering by enabling the separation of nucleic acids and proteins. However, commercial electrophoresis kits can cost up to $800 for each setup, which is cost prohibitive for most classroom budgets. This article describes a cost-friendly approach in which students build their own electrophoresis chamber out of simple, inexpensive materials and use this apparatus to separate molecules of colored dyes.
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What should I know about mercury levels in fish? And are there any recommendations for the types and amount of fish I should eat?
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Science education depends on literacy. But adding reading to a curriculum that is already packed with content, experiments, and activities can be tough. So how can a teacher accomplish this, while ensuring that students have multiple opportunities for valuable inquiry learning? This Idea Bank provides three strategies for integrating reading into the science curriculum. Each strategy can be modified or adjusted to include more or less independent work by students—based on their needs and ability.
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Lab notebooks provide students with authentic science experiences as they become active, practicing scientists. Teachers gain insight into students’ understanding of science content and processes, while students create a lasting personal resource. This article provides high school science teachers with guidelines for implementing lab notebooks in the classroom.
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Writing-to-learn activities are designed to use writing as a process in which students generate and clarify understanding of scientific concepts for themselves, rather than simply communicating with a teacher for evaluation. Instead of having students parrot science facts back to the instructor, writing-to-learn activities focus on the production of nontraditional writing assignments—such as poems, brochures, or letters—to develop understanding (Yore and Treagust 2006). This article highlights the author's experience using multimodal writing tasks and their impact on student learning in his high school biology and chemistry classrooms.
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Field-note poetry is the product of the authors’ efforts to combine current research in learning and cognition with integrated geoscience and language arts activities. In this article, they present a fun and effective activity that teaches students how to record detailed field notes and sensory observations that become the framework and inspiration for poetry.
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When renovations or new construction occur, fire extinguishers sometimes get lost in the mix. Unfortunately, whether to save money or because the fire code is misinterpreted, some schools do not install fire extinguishers in laboratories and other areas of the building. Let’s set the record straight! If flammables are present, the fire code requires the presence of fire extinguishers—even if other fire-suppression equipment, such as a sprinkler system, is available. This month’s column helps science teachers apply prudent professional and legal practices when working with combustible and flammable materials.
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The internet of the mid-to-late 1990s was defined by static web pages created by people with specialized technical skills. Today, that barrier has been all but eliminated with the emergence of easy-to-use online tools for creating and sharing content. “Web 2.0,” or the read/write web, has dramatically altered the way we communicate and share information. This column explores how science teachers can use these tools to support student learning and promote professional growth.
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Using literature to help students better understand the nature of science often involves some combination of historical vignettes, case studies, or readers’ theater. Straits (2007) discusses a different approach for using historical nonfiction in the classroom: the literature circle—a kind of structured, school version of a book club or discussion group that is designed to help students make personal connections with science. This month’s column describes how teachers can incorporate this approach into the science classroom.
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As science teachers at a suburban California high school, the authors were concerned about the lab report conclusions written by their upper-level chemistry, biology, and ecology students—which were consistently of poor quality. Their work lacked inferences derived from data and support for their concluding statements. Working as part of a collaborative project with the University of California at Davis, they formed a teacher research group to investigate this matter. This article describes the group’s efforts and its implications for the classroom.
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