The experts address the following question in this month’s column: The number 23, portrayed in a recent movie, seems to have an eerie number of life connections. Is there anything special about it?
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Membership on the NSTA High School Science Committee has been an “eye-opening and professionally rewarding experience” for Jim Redmond. In this month’s opinion piece, he discusses how his involvement with NSTA and Hawaii’s local chapter, HaSTA, has expanded his once limited world view and had a positive impact on his professional growth as an educator. He encourages all science teachers to become involved in NSTA and their local chapters to help play leadership roles in preparing students to compete in the global community.
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The end of a year is always a time for reflection and looking back. Even though December may feel more like mid-year for teachers, the end of the calendar year inevitably brings top-10 lists, reviews of the best the year had to offer, and vows for improvement. But before we make those New Year’s resolutions, why not have a look back at The Science Teacher’s (TST) 2007 year, and perhaps discover—or rediscover—an idea, activity, or teaching strategy that might be useful in your classes in 2008. To guide your reflection, here is an overview of each of the 2007 TST issues.
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Ionic bonding is a fundamental topic in high school chemistry, yet it continues to be a concept that students struggle to understand. Even if they understand atomic structure and ion formation, it can be difficult for students to visualize how ions fit together to form compounds. This article describes several engaging activities that help students gain a better understanding of ionic compound formation and how to write ionic formulas.
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The “Interrogation” approach requires students to read and take notes on assigned Scientific American articles to prepare for question-and-answer discussions (interrogations) based on the assigned articles. This activity helps students learn to think, which should be the goal of all educational processes, and most importantly, to think critically. Students employ numerous scientific inquiry skills, including comparing, inferring, recalling, classifying, analyzing, imagining, deducing, and evaluating.
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Several educators feel that teaching evolution is critical to science education, yet the issue of human evolution is sometimes avoided due to cultural pressures. The class exercise described here was developed to help educators teach this controversial topic. The exercise is based on an idea presented in Richard Dawkin’s excellent book, A Devil’s Chaplain (2003), in which he looks at ring species through space and time.
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Teaching the anatomy of the muscle system to high school students can be challenging. Students often learn about muscle anatomy by memorizing information from textbooks or by observing plastic, inflexible models. Although these mediums help students learn about muscle placement, the mediums do not facilitate understanding regarding integration of the skeletal and muscular systems. The lab activity presented here was created to make learning about muscle origins, insertions, and movement an interactive experience in which students construct full-size muscle models out of plastic skeletons, nylon stockings, and various types of tape.
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A typical card sort is an activity in which students are given a set of cards with a single concept written on each card and asked to organize the cards by grouping related concepts. The nontraditional card sorts described in this article foster critical thinking and add elements of inquiry as students use them to develop flowcharts for complex laboratory procedures, analyze and interpret data, and construct historical timelines.
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This article presents an engaging activity in which high school students use a dichotomous key to guide the creation and classification of model insects from recycled plastic lids and containers. Besides teaching the use of a dichotomous key and the effect of evolutionary descent upon groupings of organisms, this activity focuses on an often-neglected area of science teaching: creativity (Yager 2000). In contrast to many published activities that engage students in classifying manufactured items or food (e.g.; Burns 1998; Barrett and Matthews 1998; Crowther 2003), the activity described here involves students in studying real organisms.
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website dealing with education resources reported the results of an inspection, by an environmental engineer, that revealed radioactive materials in a Massachusetts high school. All sources were found within open storage in science classrooms. Given this scenario and similar ones, this month’s column addresses the following questions: How dangerous is ionizing radiation and what are the sources? Should high schools abandon the use of ionizing radiation sources in their students’ science programs? If these sources are used, what prudent safety practices should be in place?
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Students with disabilities (SWDs), students at risk, and even honors students can have a hard time relating to traditional science instruction and often disengage. However, research has shown that when science teachers use inquiry or activities-based approaches to teaching science, students' achievement is significantly higher, compared to those taught using a lecture/reading format (Scruggs and Mastropieri 1994; Scruggs et al. 1993). The integrated math and science activities presented here allow all students to explore concepts related to speed, velocity, and Newton's Third Law, using pedometer technology within an interactive learning environment (Mastropieri and Scruggs 1994).
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The internet has been a wonderful invention for making resources easily available to anyone with access. As a science teacher and NSTA member, you probably have a list of favorite internet sites for teaching-related information, including NSTA’s website. Did you know there are websites where you can view or download entire high-quality books? If you have online access, you can build a free (electronic) bookshelf of high-quality resources such as those discussed in this month’s column—without leaving your house!
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To illustrate how a digital video camera can be used to analyze various types of motion, this simple activity analyzes the motion and measures the acceleration due to gravity of a basketball in free fall. Although many excellent commercially available data loggers and software can accomplish this task, this activity requires almost no financial resources. It makes use of a standard digital video recorder that most students have as an option on their cell phones or digital cameras. Software that is freely available online and very basic computers to aid in the motion analysis are also used.
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