Don’t expect the online “innovation” to go away—email communication is here to stay, and it is your responsibility as an educational professional to respond to them, and even use them to your advantage. This month’s Editor’s Roundtable column discusses the upsides to the effective use of e-mail to communicate with parents, students, and administrators. In additon, it provides some helpful guidelines for you to follow.
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Having little or no background knowledge has never prevented seventh graders from having strong opinions on a subject! However, when asked to research a topic, middle school students (and also, many adults as well) tend to search for information which corroborates their entrenched opinions while ignoring facts and findings that refute their views. The solution? Introduce your students to research in preparation of a formal debate. This article describes how to encourage students to research both sides of a controversial topic before drawing conclusions and engages them in the process of scientific inquiry.
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Scientists have associated the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon with extreme climate events such as flooding in California, droughts in Australia, fires in Indonesia, and increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Because most textbooks fail to adequately cover this important topic, an ENSO learning experience was developed that is directed toward middle level students. It teaches them about climate science and forecasting with an in-depth study of ENSO. This article focuses on the ENSO-related material located on the DECIDE website (see Resources), a resource developed by teachers at Texas A&M University and College Station Independent School District with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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Apples and oranges … and lychees and loquats—how can one compare? That’s the challenge when a team of NSTA’s best science educators attempt to select the best of each year’s science trade books. It’s been 34 years since NSTA joined forces with the Children’s Book Council to select the best trade books each year. Publishers submit hundreds of books for evaluation, and the judges have a daunting task. First, they need to determine if the books are truly “trade books” that would normally be found in a bookstore, and they must always represent the best of the National Science Education Standards.
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Service learning is a pedagogy that has the potential to connect young adolescents with their community in authentic situations where they can initiate projects that address real needs. The use of the “community” as a context for service and learning has long been explored in science education. There are many examples of service learning initiatives which generally fall under the heading of community-based education. In most cases, students carry out service projects for the community, and along the way may learn some science. By contrast, seventh-grade students from Philippine Science High School created the Rock Showdown as a model of service learning in partnership with the community.
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The Connecte2d Technology website is an all-inclusive web resource linking the study of earthquakes and engineering design to middle school science, mathematics, and technology. Through the use of interdisciplinary activities and hands-on projects, such as those provided by this website, students can engage in authentic problem-solving situations that will help develop their understanding of earthquakes, the impact earthquakes have on humans, and how structures can be made more earthquake-resilient. All materials are free to the public and can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection.
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Chemistry is a subject that uses big words for a world we already know. Many eighth graders come to physical science classes with preconceived fears of chemistry and its big scary words. As a result, the author developed an assignment that addresses students’ fears of chemistry, involves parents, and teaches students to be more skeptical of scientific information coming their way, especially as presented on the internet. As part of the assignment, students complete an acrostic assignment in which they write a factual statement about dihydrogen monoxide that starts with each of the letters of the term.
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Exploding frogs in Germany, new volcanic islands emerging in the Pacific Ocean, Avian Influenza spreading worldwide—these are just a few of the stories in Earthweek, an online log of natural events. The weekly report chronicles events around the world, from giant earthquakes to miniscule microbe outbreaks. This interactive resource is a powerful supplement to the science curriculum—students can explore scientific topics using real data, expand their literacy skills with current event summaries, and gain a global perspective on scientific news and humanitarian catastrophes.
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Traditionally, science fair projects allow students to share their personal investigations about nature. In a science fair presentation, a student typically lectures, pointing out observations, data, analysis, and conclusions to a disinterested audience likely to be overwhelmed with all the new scientific information—not the ideal environment for effective learning. With this in mind, the author developed a science fair alternative that required students to create their own exhibits and then use them to teach science to elementary students. As a result, students would reinforce their own scientific knowledge.
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Who isn’t awed by the power, beauty, and destructive capabilities of a hurricane, tornado, or snowstorm? Storms are one of those topics that nearly all students are interested in, and by capitalizing on this interest and focusing on the big idea behind storms, educators can teach weather in a meaningful and motivating way. The five-week unit described here deliberately and actively highlights interesting or surprising aspects of weather, namely storms. Rather than a typical inquiry unit, this curriculum engages students in social construction of their understandings of weather in small- and large-group discussions, as well as a significant amount of exploration of weather concepts using online simulations, animations, and other resources.
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What are the bare bones that must exist for a room to be considered safe for teaching laboratory science? This month’s issue of Scope on Safety addresses this question by first defining when a laboratory is really considered a laboratory. Next, the basic safety standards for middle school science labs are outlined according to OSHA standards and the Environmental Protection Agency. Lastly, the article discusses how to meet the safety needs of the science activity with the facility.
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On March 3, 2007, the Moon will be at its descending node, crossing the Earth’s orbital plane, moving southward. The Moon will also be at 100% illumination, or at full Moon, during the node crossing. These are the requirements for a lunar eclipse to occur, and this year viewers across the continental United States will get two opportunities for viewing one. The lunar eclipse occurring this month will favor viewers from the eastern half of the United States, while the second lunar eclipse, occurring at the end of August, will favor the western half of the United States. More information on the August eclipse will appear in the summer issue of Science Scope.
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The June 2005 report of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Council stated that “Computational science is now indispensable to the solution of complex problems in every sector, from traditional science and engineering domains to such key areas as national security, public health, and economic innovation”
(PITAC 2005). To help teachers meet this challenging task, the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD), a portal to the National Science Digital Library, catalogs lessons and tools for teaching with computational science. CSERD’s search tool is available for free to teachers and students, as are most of the resources housed within (Joiner et al. 2005).
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Save for the subject of art perhaps, the teaching of no other discipline in K-12 schools is more reliant on vision than science. In fact, the core of science study involves observation in a controlled environment and the use of labs for observing natural events. Accordingly, any technology that allows science teachers to help their students to see the object of study more clearly is valuable. In this column we’d like to explore two technologies that make it easier for students to see science—electronic whiteboards and tablet computers.
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Gravity is a subtle but ubiquitous force that influences nearly all geologic processes from the formation of ores to the flow of glaciers and rivers. Gravity also determines the path some materials take as they flow down volcanoes. Lava flows, mudflows (also called lahars), and pyroclastic flows are three such materials. Understanding the factors that influence their path is critical to protecting lives and property. In this lesson, we focus on mudflows and demonstrate simple ways for students to predict their paths using 3-D clay models. Students are then asked to transfer their new knowledge to a real volcano.
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Demonstrating wave processes quantitatively in the classroom using standard classroom tools (such as Slinkys and wave tanks) can be difficult. As a result, through a collaborative effort, The Plymouth Wave Lab website was developed to allow students to run animations of waves on strings. In the classroom unit that was built around the website, students rotated through five different stations. The activities at each station were used to help students understand transverse and longitudinal waves, frequency, period, amplitude, wavelength, crest, trough, rarefaction, and compression. The website was used both to complement the hands-on classroom activities and as a station. In addition, the team decided to use tsunamis in the curriculum, believing they would appeal to students and stimulate their interest, months before the Sumatra tsunami hit.
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Problem-based learning experiences that extend at least two weeks provide an opportunity for students to investigate a real-world problem while learning science content and skills in an exciting way. Meteorology provides a wealth of problems students can investigate while learning specific science concepts and skills found frequently in middle level national and state curricula standards. The hands-on activity described in this article helps students learn about the science behind weather events by planning, constructing, and testing models of cities exposed to a series of simulated hurricanes and tornado conditions.
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