Scope on the Skies column

This manuscript reports on the impact of using collaborative digital summary tables on student engagement and learning. First, traditional summary tables were used during two units in 7th grade life science, then more scaffolded digital collaborative summary tables were used during three additional units. Three-part summative assessment scores were averaged at the end of each unit to analyze the impact on student learning. Compared to traditional summary tables, collaborative digital summary tables increase scaffolding, reflection, and collaboration. This article explains how they function in the classroom to increase learning. The efficacy of collaborative summary tables is shown in improved student scores, especially for students in minority groups. Using summary tables in the classroom has benefits for student engagement and learning, and the achievement gap in the classroom narrows over each unit. The benefits of reflection, scaffolding, and disaggregated instruction in science are also discussed as ways to support student learning and engagement. Overall, collaborative digital summary tables have a powerful impact on student learning and are a useful tool for teachers to increase engagement and academic success in the classroom.

Integrating literacy practices in science classrooms can help students with reading complex scientific text, write arguments as part of shared cross-disciplinary practices and engage with content. In the Linking Science, Mathematics, and Literacy for All Learners program, middle school science, mathematics, ELA, and special education teachers have been implementing multimodal STEM text sets that include a range of texts and scaffolds that support instruction and students’ content learning. One of these strategies combines reading and writing in unique and creative ways: Poetry Writing! Black-out and Found poems are accessible approaches to help students focus on key words and ideas in a complex text, pull out those words to work with them, and then reconstruct them into a poem. This approach can be used in a variety of ways, and in some of the examples provided, students include an altered page from a scientific article on which students find their words, black-out the rest of the text, and then illustrate the entire document to help show their message.

Including SSIs in the classroom can be a daunting task. To make this task more manageable, we have developed a strategy to easily create short modules for use in our classrooms that can be used to introduce new topics or apply previously learned topics. In this article we discuss how to create the modules, ideas for implementation, and lessons learned so far.

In light of the International Panel on Climate Change's findings, this article underscores the detrimental effects of climate misinformation in the U.S. and its role in impeding public understanding and action. Leveraging the power of education, an 8th-grade 5E instructional unit is introduced to foster students' climate literacy by delving into the human-induced causes of climate change. Through the 5E instructional model, students are presented with diverse materials, activities, and projects. These include discussions on climate change activism, interactive simulations, experiments mirroring Eunice Foote's groundbreaking work in 1856, and culminating in a student-produced video project highlighting climate change causes. By melding social perspectives and rigorous scientific exploration, this NGSS-aligned unit draws from relevant climate literacy research and aims to produce a generation of students equipped to actively and knowledgeably participate in global climate discourse.

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Engineering activities often emphasize the practices of engineers, but can sometimes feel disconnected from content. This engineering design activity ties together multiple Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and explicitly addresses the nature of engineering (NOE). We help students connect the activity to authentic engineering through an activity wherein students design a capsule to transport samples from the surface of Mars back to Earth for NASA. Through this process, students define criteria for a successful design by contemplating the role of rovers and then design capsules by drawing on their knowledge of forces, motion, and thermal energy transfer. Finally, students test their designs and evaluate whether they met the criteria they set.

Climate change is a pressing societal challenge. It is also a pedagogical challenge and a worldwide phenomenon, whose local impacts vary across different locations. Climate change reflects global inequity; communities that contribute most to emissions have greater economic resources to shelter from its consequences, while the lowest emitters are most vulnerable. It is scientifically complex, and simultaneously evokes deep emotions. These overlapping issues call for new ways of science teaching that center personal, social, emotional, and historical dimensions of the crisis. In this article, we describe a middle school science curriculum approach that invites students to explore large-scale data sets and author their own data stories about climate change impacts and inequities by blending data and narrative texts. Students learn about climate change in ways that engage their personal and cultural connections to place; engage with complex causal relationships across multiple variables, time, and space; and voice their concerns and hopes for our climate futures. Connections to relevant science, data science, and literacy standards are outlined, along with relevant data sets and assessments.

Open Access article

Citizen Science column

Undergraduate institutions serve as stepping stones to a student’s career. Teaching and learning in the science classrooms requires quality and integrated teaching-research learning experiences that prepare students to advance their careers. Using publicly available datasets and open-access data analyses software serves can be impactful in engaging students in meaning research experiences, while keeping low institutional expenses associated with implementing and supporting research opportunities. Here, we show two examples of student-led data research that utilized openly available data and software to analyze microbial sequence data. As part of this process, we also recognized a need for discipline-specific databases that can hold a record of publicly available data. Such a set-up will support undergraduate educators and students in accessing data relevant to their requirements, thereby narrowing the gap between data availability and accessibility. Finally, both examples illustrate the benefits of using open resources in supporting student learning, with the possibility of using such resources to develop course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURES) as part of course curricula.

There continues to be a concern regarding sustained recruitment and retention of students in STEM majors. Although the rate of attrition in these majors is comparable to other majors (Chen, 2013), the demand for trained scientists to enter the workforce with a baccalaureate degree is high (PCAST, 2012). In an effort to enhance retention and support of STEM students from their first year to graduation a Residential Learning Community (RLC) for STEM majors was established. Although learning communities of this type currently exist, this was the first one of its kind at our institution. The primary components included living on campus with a roommate also in the program, taking courses like general chemistry and first year seminar as a designated cohort, and increased faculty mentoring through advising. The RLC, named “STEM Scholars”, was developed with significant institutional buy-in and interdisciplinary faculty support, but without financial backing. Several key takeaways are reported here, most notably the need for funding to support a STEM cohort program. The effectiveness of the program and its components continues to be assessed; results of the assessment will be shared in the near future. Successful components of STEM Scholars can be incorporated at other institutions to further enhance STEM education.