I love books. Not only do they overflow the various bookshelves in my house, but they also fill boxes (and boxes!) tucked away in many of my closets. So naturally I spend most of my conference time in the Science Store.

I’m trying to use more projects and open-ended assessments this year, but I’m getting bogged down with grading. I know I should use rubrics, but it’s hard to create them for every assignment. Any suggestions on how to streamline this process?
—Sarah, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Scoring objective tests is simple: the answer is either correct or incorrect. Essay questions, lab techniques, writing assignments, reports, cooperative learning/ group work, presentations, or other projects (including multimedia ones) are more complicated. Some students (intuitively or through prior experience) just seem to know how to do things well. Others, however, need some guidance to understand what quality work is. Facing a pile of reports or a roomful of projects to evaluate can be a daunting task. Sometimes the evaluation boils down to factors such as length, neatness, spelling/grammar, and whether it’s completed on time. While these criteria may be important, it’s easy to concentrate on these without an in-depth consideration of the actual content, demonstrated skills, or creativity of a science project or activity.
This is where rubrics can be useful. A rubric is a summary of desired work criteria, including descriptions of levels of achievement for each criterion. A rubric can range from a simple checklist (where the levels are “present” or “not present”) to a more detailed, analytic tool, written in the form of a table with levels such as excellent, proficient, basic, or beginning and a description of what work at that level would include or “look like.”
Creating rubrics can be a time-consuming task, but you don’t necessarily need a brand-new rubric for each assignment. For example, a basic “lab report” rubric can be tweaked for different kinds of investigations. As your students become more accomplished, you can add additional criteria. Examining rubrics created by others will give you some ideas to use or adapt, rather than always starting from scratch. Many NSTA journal articles and NSTA Press books include rubrics for the activities or investigations and exemplify a variety of formats and criteria.
The Internet is another source of ideas for rubrics and tools for creating them. Assessment and Rubric Information from Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators has ideas for rubrics on reports and presentations. In addition, there are dozens of other resources here on graphic organizers, report cards, and more. Rubistar requires free registration, but you can create, save, and print a variety of customized rubrics right from the website. Rubrics for Assessment, provided by the University of Wisconsin, is a collection of rubrics from a variety of sources.
It may be helpful if your science department has some common rubrics, although reaching a consensus on the levels and criteria may be a challenge. It’s not easy to put criteria and levels into words, but the discussions about the indicators of student learning can be enlightening and enjoyable. These common rubrics provide consistency across subjects, teachers, and grade levels. I recently visited a school in which each classroom displayed a standard rubric for informational writing, based on the state’s writing assessment criteria. Regardless of the subject area, the students and teachers had a consistent idea of effective writing.
Sharing the rubrics with the students ahead of time shows them how their work will be evaluated and eliminates the “guess what the teacher thinks is important” frustration many of us have felt ourselves. Students also get feedback that is more focused than just the phrase “good job” or “try harder.” As they become more familiar with rubrics, your students can help create them and use them for reflection and self-assessment.

Will I see you at the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s national conference in Washington, D.C., this week?
Come say “Hi” and tell me what great sessions you’ve attended. I’ll be in the Learning Galleria, Table 12, on Thursday November 19, 2009 from 10-11:30 am, and at the Gryphon House Publishers booth 703 on Saturday morning until 11 am.
Look ahead at the schedule for state affiliate or national NAEYC professional development coming near you next year. The learning is well worth the time and money spent.
See you later,
Peggy

Did I tell you how happy I was to see the returning three-year old students use magnifiers appropriately? Because this half-day preschool for 2-5-year-olds had moved to a new space over the summer, the “usual place” for everything had to be determined. It is one thing to design a preschool in a set of rooms and another to put it into action. That’s what the children did and showed us that our design needed adjustment. So I did not get magnifiers into use until late October when I brought a container of Tenebrio beetles and larvae (mealworms although they are not worms, just baby insects like caterpillars). I was all set to have the children practice using the magnifiers before getting out the beetles but these former two-year-olds showed that they remembered how to use magnifiers by immediately holding the instrument close to their fingers to view, saying, “It’s bigger!”. The beetles looked bigger too, and the children counted the tiny legs.
Here is how children often approach magnifiers (and beetles) on first encounter:

Here are experienced beetle wranglers using magnifiers expertly:

The Science Shorts columns in the National Science Teachers Association’s elementary school journal describe classic classroom activities that emphasize science-process skills. Larger Than Life: Introducing Magnifiers by Tracy L. Coskie and Kimberly J. Davis (Science and Children, Summer 2009) is a valuable discussion and activity about magnifier use.
Now the magnifiers are easily available for self-serve in the two-year-old class room, at the light table, and in the centers room. It is so gratifying to see that the lessons of last year are retained and used by the children to learn more about their world.
Peggy

Subtle differences in words can make a big difference: for example “arguing” and “argumentation.” Our students see TV shows where arguing is the most common activity. People shout at and interrupt each other, spout ideas that may have little or no truth to them, and have little tolerance for different points of view or experiences. But structured and respectful argumentation can be a wonderful experience anywhere, especially in a classroom.
The skills involved in argumentation have to be taught and modeled, and the articles in this month’s issues have many suggestions and real-life examples of what this kind of activity looks like and sounds like in a real classroom. (I can think of a few talk show hosts who should read these, too!)
Connecting Science and Literacy Through Talk describes the benefits of whole class discussion to debrief, summarize, and reflect on learning. What the authors describe is not a “discussion” that includes interrogation by the teacher in a Q/A format, but active listening and engagement by the students (with their science notebooks). I met a teacher once who boasted that her students were so busy that they didn’t have time to think. But the authors of this article would argue that “Although direct experience is crucial to inquiry, students may learn little from the hands-on experiences if they are not given adequate time to make meaning from them.” This type of discussion would also be an appropriate time for teachers and students to use wait time. Use SciLinks for suggestions on other Literacy Skills.
The article More Than One Right Answer has “sentence starters’ for the language of argumentation and describes a debrief discussion routine. The authors note that using routines or protocols (such as a Think-Pair-Share) can help students to focus their conversations.
If you and your colleagues have been “arguing” over the role of textbooks and trade books in learning science, the article Bringing Back Books will be relevant. Rather than a dichotomy in which students either engage in inquiry OR read books and other materials, the authors suggest that several programs of research have demonstrated how inquiry-based science experiences combined with science text can support students’ scientific understanding. Their research has demonstrated that “students who experience science through a balance of text and hands-on experiences exhibit greater growth in science knowledge than do students who participate in curriculum involving mainly hands-on inquiry experiences or mainly reading science books.” It’s nice to hear that research does support the variety of planned and purposeful learning experiences that teachers use. If your students struggle with reading in science, check out some of the Reading and Writing in Science resources in SciLinks.
Reading about scientists of the past and present may inspire the scientists of the future in our classroooms. But reading biographies does not have to be a dull experience. Check out the suggestions for reading and reflecting on biographies of scientists in this month’s Teaching Through Trade Books article. For additional ideas and online biographies, use “biographies” or the name of a particular scientists as a SciLinks keyword.
Having survived a few nor’easters on the mid-Atlantic coast, I was interested in How Can Wind Cause a Bridge to Collapse? I did review some background information on bridges and resonance in SciLinks.
You won’t get much of an argument (but perhaps lively argumentation) if you focus on the science behind some familiar topics: pizza (Solar Pizza Friday), skateboarding (Speed Kills! Or Does It?), and Digging Soil. For the last topic, check out the selected Scilinks for Explore Soil and use the search term “soil” for even more information and teaching suggestions.

Judging by the large audience, teachers love teaching astronomy, and of course they love free resources, too. John McFarland of the Johannes Kepler Project delivered both (in period costume!), sharing an annotated list of software, props, songs (with an emphasis on They Might Be Giants Here Comes Science CD), websites, applets, activities, and more. Get the complete list at http://johanneskepler.org/.

Looking for a little outdoors time in between sessions? If the beach doesn’t do it for you, a short trip up the coast to Hugh Taylor Birch State Park will. Smack dab in the city, this “oasis of tropical hammocks” features native and exotic plants, plus an opportunity to see mangroves. It is well worth a visit, for “botanizing,” wildlife spotting, or just some fresh air and exercise among the trees.

Learning about science curriculum and meeting more early childhood teachers than I expected were the happy outcomes of the two days I spent at the really well-run Virginia Association of Science Teachers 2009 Professional Development Institute.

Every workshop slot had a selection of presentations appropriate for the preK-2 teacher, and the organizers really know how to build a fun program. There was food, fun (dancing and a fun-dollars auction Friday night, and Mad Science presentation and door prizes on Saturday), and food for thought. I had to choose among offerings and was only able to get to some of the sessions:

• Discovery Tree program, teaching young children ecology by connecting literature and visual models—from University of Virginia’s Blandy Experimental Farm.
• Growing up WILD, learning about wildlife for young children and their teachers—from Project WILD.
• Planting a Square Foot Garden (using the book of the same name by Mel Bartholomew) to set up a school garden that is easy to maintain and can include every class, a square foot at a time.
• Butterfly resources, enthusiasm for learning was infectious and the information plentiful—their favorite site is The Butterfly website.
• Using podcasts as a learning tool—although high school teachers presented this how-to and why-to workshop, I can see how audio and visual podcasts will be a great teaching tool to use in trainings for early childhood teachers.
• Ecology Clubs—projects for young children, such as making a percussion instrument, a rainstick, using discarded cardboard tubes.

In a workshop an early childhood science teacher tries out a  leaf-shape sit-upon. Young children pick a leaf shape to sit on,  and later look for the leaf shape in the field.
Look up your state science teacher association chapter and  Associated Groups on the NSTA website and look for  professional development institutes you can attend and you can present.
Peggy

Playing in water opens many avenues for science explorations—flow, wetness or phases of matter, volume, and buoyancy. Unexpected results make children think and explore further. For example, children know that fish are supposed to float, so playing with a toy fish that sinks will get children thinking about why. We can let children know that questions are to be shared by listening to theirs, asking open-ended questions, and then having the students record their answers, or dictate to us to record. Science activities are good platforms for using literacy skills because children often want to tell the story of what they did. Read the November 2009 Early Years column in Science and Children about creating a book about a classroom investigation. View sample book pages at www.nsta.org/SC0911.
Given an assortment of interesting objects and a tub of water, children will make discoveries while playing. Demonstrate the definitions for those unfamiliar with the words “float” and “sink” with two objects, perhaps a cork and a coin. With experience and enough interestingly shaped objects, students learn that whether an object floats or sinks is related to both the material it is made from, and its shape. To begin with, a sink-or-float exploration can focus on the property of materials. Materials which challenge assumptions include, sponges, pumice, fruit, small lidded containers (some completely, some partly, filled with water), soap, and dense plastic models of animals that swim (children often think these will float like their real-life counterparts). A variety of balls, jar and bottle lids, keys and coins, plasticine clay, and sea shells are attractive to children, and they may also want to choose items to test from the classroom.
After a period of minutes or days of exploration, students can do some predicting using this knowledge. Using exaggerated body gestures to represent our predictions is fun. “Do you think it will float?” Put your hands high above your head and gently wave them like they are floating above you. “Do you think it will sink?” Slide your hands down from your shoulders to your lap like they are sinking. With a bit of direction by the teacher towards documenting their thinking in drawings or writing, the children will have a record of their predictions to compare with what they find out when they put the object in water.
Students can explore buoyancy with a Discovery Bottle—for details read Sandy Watson’s article, Discovery Bottles, in the July 2008 issue of Science and Children. She explains how “Discovery bottles are inexpensive, quick to assemble, and an excellent way to provide students with practice in developing science-process skills, such as observing, measuring, predicting, and so on.”
The next time you can present some new objects and ask the children to separate the objects into groups, those that they think will float and those that they think will sink. The children may choose to create a third group of those objects they aren’t sure about, or objects that sometimes sink and sometimes float. Be sure to let children know that it is okay to have differing predictions. To keep the two concepts clear in their minds, use two clear cups on the table, one with a sinking object in it and one with a floating object in it, to represent the two groups, and the children can place objects around the cups. Tell the children that scientists ask questions and try to answer them and they can too.
I like to keep some towels handy to help with clean up, and to rinse all objects with a bleach solution and allow them to air dry before storing. Send home the children’s papers documenting their work  and it might inspire families to continue the exploration at home in the bathtub or at the sink.
Peggy