My colleague and I are hoping to attend NSTA’s national conference this year, our first. The school has funds to cover some of the costs, but one of the school board members says conferences are just excuses to lounge around and play golf! What can we do to convince him otherwise?
—Brianna, Wilmington, Delaware

Hmm. I’ve been attending educational conferences for more than 25 years, and I have yet to see teachers “lounging around.” Attendees are usually exhausted (in a good way) from participating in sessions from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, browsing the exhibit floor for new ideas and materials, and networking with other educators. That’s after preparing lesson plans for their substitutes before they left home.
Attending the NSTA national and area conferences are wonderful professional development activities. Many of the sessions are hands-on, demonstrating strategies and procedures that can be used in the classroom. The opportunity to hear scientists describe their research in person is extraordinary (I still remember sitting in the front row to hear Carl Sagan). If your school is updating textbooks or reference materials, virtually every publisher is there, along with vendors of lab equipment, supplies, and teaching materials—many with free samples! Making connections with teachers from around the world is a priceless experience.

In my district, teachers who wanted to attend conferences had to submit a mini-proposal, outlining their professional goals for attending, topics they were interested in learning more about, and a strategy for sharing information with the rest of the teachers when they returned. After the conference, we had to submit a report. It was work, but we understood some accountability and documentation was necessary because the district was using grant funds. Perhaps such a proposal from you and your colleague would show the school board you mean business.
Survey other teachers for suggestions on sessions to attend: topics they would like more information about, content students struggle with, and new equipment or materials to investigate and compare. Ask your students what you should know more about (related to science, of course). Add these topics to your proposal. The conference schedule is available ahead of time online, so you and your colleague can decide how to split up the sessions to meet your needs and those of your department.
In your proposal, explain how you will share what you’re learning. During the conference, use tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Skype, blogs, or e-mail to update the folks at home. Send pictures of yourself at various sessions and events or posing with famous people. Many of the conference presenters upload their handouts and other materials to the NSTA Communities site, so even if you can’t make a session, the materials can be instantly accessible.
Your proposal could also note you are willing to do a presentation to the faculty about what you learned, lead a discussion, or demonstrate a new idea. Let your supervisors know you will prepare a report to the board about your experiences, too. Turn in session evaluations and you will have access to a NSTA “transcript” documenting your participation. Include it with your report (my supervisor was amazed we attended Saturday and Sunday sessions, too).
You can also point out there are no golf courses in center city Philadelphia! I hope to see you there.

Making the connections between science, reading, writing, and media literacy has been a professional interest of mine for many years. So I get really excited when The Science Teacher has literacy as a theme. In addition to these articles, SciLinks has additional resources under the topic Reading and Writing in Science with ideas to help students understand the structure of informational text and understand the content.
Our colleagues at the elementary level are probably familiar with “literature circles.” This month’s Prepared Practitioner column describes how this technique for getting students to read and discuss can be applied at the secondary level (see a similar article in the Literature Circle Roles for Science Vocabulary (TST Summer 2007), Literature Circles for Science (S&C November 2006), and A Literature-Circles Approach to Understanding Science as a Human Endeavor (SS October 2007). Literature circles are not difficult to implement, and many teachers have the structure in place to do so. As the authors describe these versions of Literature Circles at various grade levels, I was reminded of the “jigsaw” cooperative learning strategy, which many secondary teachers already use in labs or other activities.

Another term that’s used in elementary reading is “wide reading,” as described in the article Building Background Knowledge. The authors define the term as “students independently read books, magazines, or other available materials for an extended period of time.” They describe an action research project that looked at the use of wide reading a way of improving students’ content knowledge. A difference between free reading and wide reading is a focus on a specific topic. If you need more materials at different reading levels, you could consider searching SciLinks for informational websites, using the “Save to Favorites” option to create a list of sites for a wide reading list on a topic. If electrophoresis is part of your curriculum, you could start a wide reading list with the SciLinks sites suggested in the article Gel Electrophoresis on a Budget to Dye For.
If your efforts at poetry consisted of the roses-are-red style, take a look at Rocks and Rhymes. The authors describe a process in which students summarize field notes in creative ways. I observed a biology class that did this. The students added a haiku as part of the summary of the lab activity. Using this format caused the students to really think about their observations and analysis, and they couldn’t copy something from a textbook (or a partner). If you want to see what some of these poetry styles look like, go to Poetry for Kids or Types of Poetry. Your students may be familiar with these from their language arts class, so they might think their science teacher is crazy at first. Acrostics or cinquains are good places to start.
Check out the Connections for this issue. Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, the authors provide handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, examples of student work, etc.

Is the arrival of gardening catalogs inspiring you to dream about planting with your students, and plan a garden of any size? You know that people of all ages benefit from spending time outdoors and that your children were interested in seeds, perhaps in October if you carved a pumpkin, opened a milkweed pod, or cut vegetables to make “Stone Soup.” But how to be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew, that the garden will be a success and the children will learn concepts that are part of the National Science Education Standards, or your state’s standards?

Let the National Gardening Association do it for you by following the comprehensive gardening curriculum in their new book, Garden Adventures: Exploring Plants with Young Children, by Sarah Pounders. She urges us to start small so initial enthusiasm is not exhausted before the plants mature. I had the pleasure of reviewing an early draft of sections of the book, and I look forward to using the lessons, beginning with the first: “What is a plant?”. The Plant Parts reproducible page of a pea plant will prepare my students for planting peas in February . To attract butterflies, we’ll plant flowers (for nectar), and dill, parsley, milkweed, and cabbage plants (for caterpillar food) in April, or maybe May, depending on the weather!
Garden Adventures has an easy-to-follow layout with basic lessons expanded in the “Digging Deeper” sections, teacher background information, reproducible, and newsletters to send home. Photos of children gardening will show your students that even young children can be gardeners. The list of children’s books includes old favorites—The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter—and some new to me—Whose Garden Is It? by Mary Ann Hoberman. The National Gardening Association’s Kids Gardening website has additional activities and information.
I’ll pair this book with the book Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children by Karrie Kalich, Dottie Bauer, Deirdre McPartlin, from Red Leaf Press, and have the students do some tasting in spring, in anticipation of harvest in the fall.
Peggy

The word “data” for some people conjures up pages of numbers or a dreadful experience in statistics class. But get rid of the deer-in-the-headlights look and dig into lessons focused on forensics, snow, fruit flies, and Down syndrome. The protocols, rubrics, and examples can help you work with students in this critical inquiry process.
I’ve been trying to learn more bird songs, from CDs and other media. So I was blown away by the idea of learning insect sounds as described in Exploring Sound with Insects. It was fascinating to read how the authors combined the physics of sound with an investigation in biology. I downloaded the software Raven Lite (free!) from Cornell University and spent an entire evening “playing around” with it and with the sound resources listed at the end of the article. The authors describe how to use the software to record and analyze insect songs, but it seems like the software could be used to record and analyze musical sounds or environmental sounds, too. The whole lesson looks fascinating, and if you’re concerned about learning the software, perhaps a few students could become familiar with it and do a demonstration for the class? (For background resources on sound, check out SciLinks with the keywords “sound” and “communication”)

With many of us in the grips of winter weather, perhaps a virtual exploration of Hawaii would be interesting. The lesson described in Predicting the Timing and Location of the Next Hawaiian Volcano shows students how to extract data from maps, diagrams, and tables and how to analyze the data by looking for trends and patterns. For background information for this lesson, check out SciLinks with the keywords “volcano” and “ring of fire” – a great way to integrate concepts in earth science and geography.
As someone who actually enjoys statistics, I was intrigued by the article Is Knowledge Random? Introducing Sampling and Bias Through Outdoor Inquiry. My state includes statistics in the math standards, so this lesson could be a way to show students some practical connections between science and math. I’ll share this with a math colleague.

NSTA members are in conversation in all kinds of places—on these blogs, in NSTA’s Listservs, on our new online communities, and throughout our external social media outposts, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Recent conversations include cold weather experiments (a “hot” topic these past couple of weeks through most of the US), mitosis activities, and stoichiometry labs and activities. Get in on the conversation and make new professional connections while you’re at it!

My colleagues and I would like to try some collaborative projects between elementary and secondary students. Our buildings are not close, so in-person events are impossible during the school day. Do you have any suggestions for projects involving students from different grade levels?
—Cindy, Roswell, Georgia
I’ve always envied school districts with facilities close enough for students to go back and forth. I thought it would be interesting for my middle-school students to work with elementary students and be mentored by high school students. However, I found out face-to-face interactions were difficult to coordinate even in districts with a single campus due to different schedules and the reluctance of some principals to have students leave the building during the day.
In the “old days,” we tried pen-pals or email-pals, sending projects and materials back and forth between schools. Although there was initial interest, the time lag and lack of face-to-face opportunities for feedback led to the gradual demise of these programs.
New web-based tools and Internet accessibility have rekindled interest in inter-school projects. Possibilities for collaborations might include having older students create podcasts or videos, which can be posted on school-friendly sites such as TeacherTube.
Another possibility is computer-based video conferencing. The logistics are fairly simple now: a computer with a camera and microphone (some computers have these built in; if not they are inexpensive to add), Internet access, and software such as Skype (the software is free to download and access between Skype accounts is free; visit www.skype.com). Personally, I’m hooked on video conferencing—communicating with colleagues across the United States and in Australia and “attending” meetings online rather than traveling several hours to a site.

Before you start, brainstorm some possible types of collaborations to make sure a project is worth the time and effort and accomplishes an academic purpose. A once-and-done demonstration event is easy to do, but an ongoing collaboration requires thought and planning. Older students could teach a brief science lesson, answer questions, demonstrate how to use scientific equipment, then watch the younger ones practice or offer advice on science investigations. Younger students could initiate a question and answer session on science topics or high school science courses. Older students get the opportunity to summarize their own learning and work with younger students, who could benefit from these role models. Students at both levels could communicate in other languages. The article “Skype in the Classroom: Technology Brings Students Together” shows an example of an inter-school project.
Some schools may have sites such as Skype blocked or not allow software to be downloaded. It’s interesting that schools are so concerned with the possibility of students accessing inappropriate sites or images that legitimate academic projects are discouraged. Perhaps if you had a rationale for using web conferencing (focused on science learning) and a detailed plan for the event (including proper supervision), a small crack in the firewall could be arranged for your project. Present your case to your information technology director or principal.
Test your connection with a colleague first to iron out any bumps. The first time you try an online conference, there will probably be a lot of oh-wows and giggles, particularly if the students are unfamiliar with the process. Give yourself permission to make a few mistakes or fumbles, too. (It took me a few times until I figured out how to display my image!) Once the initial giggles and fumbles are over, focused events can begin.
After you get hooked up, the possibilities are virtually endless—including a student on extended medical leave in class activities, connecting several classes for an event, interviewing a scientist, inviting interested elementary or middle school students to “sit in” on a high school discussion (or vice versa), holding online parent conferences, engaging in professional development with teachers in other schools, hosting virtual visits by parents or other teachers. To find potential collaborators beyond your own school, use resources such as the NSTA Communities or the NSTA listserves.
Starting in the January 2010 issue of The Science Teacher, “Science 2.0” will discuss tools for sharing and creating content via Web 2.0. If you don’t get a hard copy of this journal in the mail, you can check out the column online.
Resources:
50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom
The Many Roles of Skype in the Classroom
Skype in Schools
Skype in the Classroom
Using Skype in the Classroom

Some children love pandas, some love dogs, but many more love dinosaurs. At times it seems young children feel dinosaurs are “more real”—more interesting, more important, more present in their minds—than modern animals. “More real” might be an exaggeration, but details about dinosaurs are verbalized more often than those about most modern animals. They can tell you that “ a Troodon has three toes and one extra long sharp claw” and “a T.Rex has really big sharp teeth” but have difficulty describing the length or number of teeth or toes of a dog. (Just my perception, and not a result from any kind of survey, or maybe it’s my own prejudice, reflecting my interest in fossils.)
You can use this intense interest in dinosaurs to teach about how animal body shapes help animals survive in their environment. To get children to think about and research how dinosaurs lived, ask the children, “If you were a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would you be?” Open-ended questions about their dinosaur will encourage them to search and talk about details—“What shape were its feet? I wonder what its ears looked like, or why were its eyes on the sides of its head?”
Use the resources listed in this post and in the January 2010 Early Years column in Science and Children. Teachers and older students can use The Dino Database to learn how to pronounce dinosaur names and how they are grouped. Design activities or assignments that draw attention to details such as type of teeth, shape of feet, and fossil evidence for behavior such as living in herds or nest building. This directs their thinking to how the shape of the dinosaur and fossil evidence gives clues to how they may have lived.
Children reveal their understanding in their imaginative play. Do they have the toy Maiasauras construct nests and care for the babies, and have the carnivorous Coelophysis (also called “Rioarribasaurus”) eat only animals, and when pretending to be Diplodocus on the playground do they run in herds?
While learning about dinosaurs students can learn about the nature of science—how, with further study and new technology, new discoveries are made changing what we know about dinosaurs.
Here are some resources that will be of interest to you and your students.

Books about dinosaurs, nonfiction and fiction

• Dinosaurs, Amazing Dinosaurs: The Fiercest, the Tallest, the Toughest, the Smallest, and Amazing Dinosaurs: More Feathers, More Claws, Big Horns, Wide Jaws! all by Dougal Dixon (1998, 2000, and 2007, Boyds Mills Press). Details are easy to see in the large drawings about the variety in dinosaur bodies.
• First Dinosaur Encyclopedia by DK Publishing (2006, DK Children). With a timeline and fascinating details about specific dinosaurs, this book will help teachers and children alike make sense of the ever-expanding list of known dinosaur species—when and how they lived.
• How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? series by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mark Teague (2000, 2009, Blue Sky Press). No one is better than Jane Yolen at imaginative story telling, and children love to see themselves represented as the dinosaurs they imagine themselves to be. See if your class can identify dinosaurs such as the Kentrosaurus or Pachycephalosaurus outside of their usual habitat, and tell you what their bodies were able to do.

Resources about scientific work

• Watch “Uncovering Tawa hallae”, a 5 minute National Science Foundation audio slideshow about the discovery and analysis of the fossil of a Triassic, carnivorous dinosaur. Scroll down and click on “downloads” to print out cool photos of the fossil, the reconstructed skeleton, the Ghost Ranch fossil bed, and the paleontologist team.
• In Science News for Kids (11/19/09), paleontologist Jack Horner tells how fossils representing what were thought to be 3 kinds of dinosaurs were revealed by CAT scans to (probably) be only one kind, but at 3 different stages of growth, juvenile, teenager, and adult.
• When I was growing up, dinosaurs were thought to be slow moving animals that dragged their tails. The books we owned were, Dinosaurs (A Little Golden Book) by Jane Werner Watson, illustrated by William de J. Rutherfoord (Golden Press;1959), and a work of fiction, Danny and the Dinosaur (An I Can Read Book, Level 1) by Syd Hoff (1958, HarperCollins). Since then scientists have researched how animals balance and the type of stride that would make the fossilized footprints that have been uncovered—without an accompanying tail print—and determined that dinosaurs probably lifted their tails as they moved.
• Teachers can see lists of works with early illustrations of dinosaurs on these sites to use when searching for illustrations that represent out-dated ideas:
  • Vintage Dinosaur Book Web Page
  • Old Dinosaur Books
• What’s Wrong With This Picture? An Audio Critique: Listen to dinosaur paleontologist Thomas Holtz talk about tail dragging versus raised tails and other revisions on National Geographic. com

Activities to assess children’s knowledge about how dinosaurs related to their habitat

Build a diorama

Construct a
diorama based on research—picture research or text reading. Provide shoeboxes, small, accurate models of dinosaurs, plasticine clay to anchor the dinosaurs and paper to draw pictures of the appropriate habitat including food source. (Hint: trioramas can be made with a single sheet of paper if you do not have easy access to shoeboxes. See www.reallygoodstuff.com/pdfs/144012.pdf and www.mcsdk12.org/curr/WebQuests/Spider/Triorama.htm for directions.)

Write a poem

Write a poem about a physical characteristic of the chosen dinosaur explaining how the body part functioned to help the dinosaur species survive. Your students might be inspired by Jack Prelutsky’s Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast (illustrated by Arnold Lobel). Some language may be above most young children but those who love language will enjoy the challenging words such as “slaughtered”, “nibbled”, “perpetual”, and “morsel.”

Play a game

Play “I’m thinking of a dinosaur body feature that is for…” and have students call out names of dinosaur body features which fit the named category (eating plants, catching animals, keeping warm, running fast, balancing a big head, eating meat, hiding among plants, climbing, or other description that allows for many answers). For example, “I’m thinking of a dinosaur body feature that would help a dinosaur see well to hunt.” Possible correct answers: big eyes, eyes facing forward, good eyesight. Students could be asked to explain their answer and give an example of a dinosaur that shows that body shape.
Have a good time using dinosaurs as the topic for learning about how animal bodies are shaped to perform a particular function,
Peggy

A few years ago, I found some interesting background data for a professional development project I was working on–when elementary teachers were asked to name a specific science area that they would find difficult to teach, more than 60% mentioned physical science. And yet this is an area in which students can have a high interest level: electricity, heat, magnetism, chemical reactions, optics, or sound. If your resolution is to do a better job with physical science content, consider the articles in this December issue. Even if you teach at an upper grade level, these activities can be appropriate for students who do not have a strong background in physical science, especially in electricity and light. I really appreciate that the authors included photos of their students doing the activities and samples of their work.
This issue has links to SciLinks resources on Electricity and Light at the K-4 level. However, you’ll find a larger collection of resources if you go directly to SciLinks and use the keywords electricity and light for grades 5-8. Many of these would also be appropriate for younger students, and they also can give you some background information on the topics. I really like the activities offered by the Exploratorium Museum.
I was really intrigued by the possibilities of Shoe Box Circuits as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding of circuits. I shared this with a middle school teacher who is going to try it with her students, with the suggestions in the article for more advanced topics.
For resources related to this article and others, check out the Connections for this month’s issue, too. Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda or grade level, the authors provide ideas for handouts, background information sheets, blank data sheets, rubrics, etc.

The snow was lovely for me, arriving on a  Friday night after my children were home and  enough neighbors were in town to make the  shoveling more of a community gathering  than a huge chore.
I did wish that school was in session so I  could learn what my students would do with  20 inches of snow, an unusual amount for our  region and a first for their young lives.
I would have the children measure the snow depth around the playground using a stick and record the depth by drawing the length on paper, scoop snow and build up ramps for sliding mini-sleds (bowls) down, fill a measuring cup full of snow to take inside to see how much water is in one cup of snow, and dig down in the sand pit to see how the snow affected the sand. Would children work long enough to mound snow high enough (on the otherwise flat playground) for themselves to slide down?
Looking to northern regions I found suggestions for snow activities.

• From Wings of Discovery in Ontario Canada, a program developed by Let’s Talk Science to help children develop important skills while having fun exploring the world through science:
  • Take a walk in the snow with your child. Look for footprints made by animals and people.  Use a field guide to identify them if you wish.
  • Bring a dishpan full of snow inside for your child to explore. Talk about how the warm temperature inside causes the snow to melt.
  • Fill spray bottles with coloured water to colour outdoor snow sculptures.
  • When outside, point out the melting snow or ice and ask your child to tell you why it is melting.
• From Sheri Amsel’s Exploring Nature Educational Resource in New York:
  • Where Do Animals Go in Winter? Find information and beautiful scientific illustrations to answer your children’s questions.
• In the December 2009 Science and Children, the Natural Resources column, “Winter Secrets” by Valynda Mayes shares a list of in-print resources.

Speaking of in-print resources, reading aloud a fiction and a nonfiction book on the same day (or even same circle time if student attention allows) can help children relate new information to their own experiences. Try these books.

Nonfiction

• Snow and the Earth and Snow and People, both by Nikki Bundey (2000 and 2001, Lerner) which relate how snow is formed and how people live in regions with snow. The photographs support, and expand on, the text.

Fiction

• It’s Snowing by Olivier Dunrea (2002, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), tells of a mother who shares the joy of a snow fall with a very young child.
• The Big Snow by Berta Hader and Elmer Hader (2005, Alladin). Do you remember this 1949 Caldecott Medal tale of animals coming to the food put out by an older couple? Still in print because it’s so enjoyable.
• First Snow by Emily Arnold McCully (2003, HarperCollins) A mouse family goes sledding in this formerly, now nearly, wordless book with lots of detail in the illustrations to talk about.
• Snow by Manya Stojic (2002, Knopf). Forest animals remark on the coming snow and the various ways they will adapt their behavior to survive it.
• And of course, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1962, Viking), in which Peter explores a snowfall and tries to bring a small piece of it home.

So I’m hoping for more snow in January, enough to explore but not enough to close school. And if the children do not come dressed for the weather, I’ll bring the snow inside. How about you? Are you living where the children always come to school with boots, mittens, and hats, or where the only snow people are those made from marshmallows?
Peggy

Here in the Northeast, we had to dig our way through the recent storm, the most snow we’ve had in my neck of the woods for two years! I once hosted an exchange teacher from Australia in January (their summer break), who had never seen snow. Snowplows, snowblowers, snowshoes, and skimobiles were all new to her! She said it was very beautiful, “but we never realized that afterwards, one must shift it about.”
Even if you live in a part of the country that does not usually have to shift it about, snow can still be an interesting topic in a meteorology unit. In SciLinks, use the key word “Snowflakes” for grades 9-12. (It’s ok if you don’t teach at those levels–the sites have lots of photographs and ideas for many grade levels.) I really like the All About Snow site from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
If the forecast includes the dreaded “wintry mix,” the precipitation section of the WW2010 site has diagrams that differentiate between rain, freezing rain, sleet, hail, and snow.
I saw a school the other day where the windows were decorated with “snowflakes” of eight sides. (I guess octagons are easier to cut out of paper?) For more realistic pictures, check out the photo galleries at Snow Crystals, created by a physics professor at CalTech. The photo at the top is from his site.
And if you have a copy of the book Snowflake Bentley in your classroom or library, check out the related resources on this photographer at the Buffalo Museum of Science.
My snowshoes and binoculars are ready for some winter birding over the holiday break. Best wishes to all!