Some children chafe at any restriction, including car seat straps. Doing an activity about force and motion may not make them any happier to be strapped in but it may help them understand what could happen if they weren’t restrained during an accident. The March 2009 Early Years column in Science and Children provides instructions for discussing child passenger safety while modeling a car and passenger using a cup and marble. Children look at me curiously when I tell them, “This is me (holding up the marble) and this cup is my car. I’m going for a drive.” They all want to ‘drive,’ and we do—after they tell me how I can stay safely in my seat in the event of another car getting in the way. They propose seatbelts which we make out of tape. First we drive without ‘seatbelts’ because this is pretend, then with the ‘seatbelts’ to see what happens. The children are repeating the experiment. Through experience they understand more fully that a loose marble will continue to roll even when the cup that was holding it is stopped.
Note that not all children think of using seatbelts to restrain their marble-drivers, notably those whose families do not own a car. They still enjoy the activity and taking home an information sheet for adults. Here are websites for such information:
The Washington State Booster Seat Coalition: Download these one-page informative flyers at no cost to raise awareness about booster seat basics. They are available in Amharic, Arabic, English, Chinese, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrinva, and Vietnamese.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: Information in English and Spanish, including videos that teach the appropriate restraints according to the child’s age and size.
Transportation Safety Tips for Children, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: A set of 11 topics, including riding in a car, bus, on a bike, and walking, these pages fully describe the rational behind using different car seat restraints at different ages and describe child development, such as, “Children can’t judge speed and they think cars can stop instantly.” Copy the pages to share with the families of your students.
Children enjoy exploring motion.
Peggy

I’m wondering what crops your class grows—Peas? Collards? Cilantro? Zinnias? Marigolds?
Planting peas on President’s Day has been the first item on my planting list for many years, and is the topic of the Early Years column in the February 2009 issue of Science and Children.
In USDA Plant Hardiness temperature zone 7a (see map), February is the earliest time I can plant this cool-weather crop. But this year with temperatures varying from 21°F to 51°F in the same week, I’m never sure if the children will be able to plant on days that I’m at their school. Results have been mixed. One year we had enough pea pods for every child to try one. They loved the crunch! Another year every pea shoot was eaten to a stub, perhaps by voles? Then there was the year there was so little rain and not enough human water-ers that the pea plants were stunted and produced only a few pods.
One of the joys for teachers who have one class is being able to develop a close relationship, and to be there for all the teachable moments. As a “push-in” science teacher, I’m not in the class the next day so I can’t immediately follow up on the spider that was found behind the blocks, or assist the children’s daily observations of a pea seed sprouting in a bag. (But I do get to fine-tune my teaching by trying it out on many classrooms with different populations and different curriculums.) The Fall 2008 issue of The Science Educator (Volume 17, Issue 2) discusses how the Center for Science Education at Education Development Center, Inc. invited researchers and practitioners to come together to think about the best models for teaching science in elementary schools—by the classroom teacher, by a science specialist, or a mixture of those arrangements. As scientists do, they first talked to define their terms, to better communicate with each other. This research is exciting because whenever education researchers mix it up there will be new information for teachers to use in the classrooms as we work towards using the best practices.
One way to share the results of seed sprouting is to have a brief class observation and drawing time every day. Date the drawings and encourage students to write or dictate their descriptions. Posting the drawings outside the classroom lets others follow the progress of your class’s discoveries.
Peggy

Sometimes as a teacher leads an activity, a student verbalizes all the observations and new questions that were hoped for, making one think, “Was this child coached to say these things, or am I really eliciting all this learning!?” I like to believe that the other children are also thinking what this one child is saying, but they are across the circle, or shyer, or faster to move on to the next thing, so I don’t get to hear their thoughts.
What I heard:
“When you shine it [the flashlight beam] over the light it disappears.” (The larger ceiling light is brighter than the flashlight beam and obscures it.)
“Move it close and it gets smaller, and then up and it gets bigger.” (Noticing the change in size of the circle of light as she moved the flashlight closer and farther away from the floor.)
“My hand got in the way.”
In one classroom the sun was conveniently shining in a window providing a very bright light to reflect around the classroom using mirrors.
“The light comes here [to the mirror’s surface] and then goes [gestures to the wall].”
How can I know what impact my teaching has on the students? I look to see if children are trying the materials one way and then another way, asking questions, speculating on what some new item can be used for, and telling me or the classroom teacher about their discoveries.
Children who are not engaged these ways often respond when a teacher sits near them and asks an open-ended question, such as, “What do you see?” or “Show me what you can do with the flashlight.” See the list of “Question Frames for Teachers” as well as the comments and questions by children in the comprehensive lesson plan on exploring shadows from a South Dakota teacher.
In the days following the activity the children asked to use the flashlight again during the morning circle time. Because it was not a new experience, the flashlight could be passed around the circle without disrupting the proceedings. As classroom teachers extend the exploration of the concept in the days following the activity with the science teacher, they make sure to hear the thoughts of all the children.
What are your students’ discoveries?
Peggy

I’ve never taken part in the Great Backyard Bird Count but it sounds like an interesting way to learn about collecting data and become part of a greater group contributing to knowledge about bird population trends. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has partnered with the National Audubon Society on a project that includes the contributions of novice bird watchers to experts—me and you, and our students! See the Great Backyard Bird Count website for the simple instructions on how you and your class can participate. There is a “Learn about Birds” section with tips on identifying birds.
The ten most commonly reported bird species last year were:

1. Northern Cardinal
2. Mourning Dove
3. Dark-eyed Junco
4. Downy Woodpecker
5. American Goldfinch
6. Blue Jay
7. House Finch
8. Tufted Titmouse
9. Black-capped Chickadee
10. American Crow

Have you seen any of those bird species lately? A flock of Mourning Doves have been resting on the ground among the rhododendrons in front of my house (my neighbor fills her feeders daily), startling me by suddenly flying up all together when I open the front door. So I know where I’ll find my first five birds on February 13!
Bird-shape rubbings are an easy way for young children to make accurate body shape drawings. They can fill in the details after completing the rubbing.
Once they start looking at birds, children will soon be pointing out the small brown ones and the large black ones, the red birds and the big white ones, otherwise known as sparrows, crows, cardinals, and gulls.
Cut out this mourning dove shape (30 centimeters/12 inches long) from old cereal boxes or poster board and help your students choose appropriate colors to make a rubbing that reflects what they see in nature. (Click on the photo to see larger version.)
The shapes of additional birds can be made by enlarging photos of birds to their actual size (see lengths listed in identification books) and cut from cardboard. Later children can make a fanciful bird, perhaps a pink crow with blue wings!
Be aware that book illustrations showing groupings of birds in perspective—those farther away pictured smaller—may confuse children about the actual or relative size of different species. I like the way  Counting is for the Birds by Frank Mazzola Jr. (1997, Charlesbridge Publishing) combines counting and identifying east coast bird species that often visit a feeder. Feathers for Lunch by Lois Elhert (1990, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) illustrates the dangers of allowing cats to have access to a bird feeder while introducing 12 species.
Some birding groups offer online identification guides, such as that of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Education Program about the refuge in Ridgefield, Washington on the Columbia River floodplain. It’s exciting to see the details of the birds revealed by the photographs.
Whatever the weather on February 13, I think I can count birds for 15 minutes. The online bird photos are already identified but birds outdoors present a challenge.
Peggy

I have to attend a workshop on teaching reading in the content areas. Is it really the job of a secondary science teacher to teach students how to read?
—Sofia, Visalia, California
Short answer—Yes, it is the job of science teachers to help their students learn how to read science materials.
I once worked on a project that involved reading in the primary grades. I was surprised much of the instruction took place with stories and most of the books in the classroom libraries were fiction as students learn to read. However, in the upper elementary and secondary grades, students read to learn. They are expected to comprehend and learn from nonfiction or informative text (as in textbooks, websites, and other publications). These materials have a different structure and different kinds of illustrations than fictional text. I wonder if many secondary students’ reading “problems” are, in reality, a lack of guidance and experience in interacting with informational text.
Unlike what students might see in a reading or English class, science resources are not usually written in a story-telling style or in chronological sequence. Science text often starts with a main concept and then provides descriptions or supporting details. Science text often uses headings, subheadings, abstracts, summaries, sidebars, footnotes, and graphics. Science text uses specialized vocabulary and may be written from an expert point of view. Students may not realize reading science text can be a slower process than reading a novel or story, and rereading a section is appropriate and even encouraged.
It’s frustrating for teachers when students don’t seem to comprehend what they’re reading. Two resources I’ve used and would highly recommend are Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If Not Me, Then Who? by Rachel Billmyer and Mary Lee Barton and its companion Teaching Reading in Science (A Supplement to Teaching Reading in the Content Areas) by Barton and Deborah L. Jordan (both are available from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) bookstore . These books focus on reading for comprehension and include activities and graphic organizers to engage students before, during, and after reading content area materials.
Understanding science text also requires visual literacy. Think of the many nonlinguistic representations used in science: symbols on a weather map, the Periodic Table, chemical equations, Punnett squares, molecular diagrams, formulas, graphs, diagrams, and maps. It’s important for science teachers to help students understand how these graphics have meaning and are an integral part of the language of science.
Regardless of the grade level, an effective way to help students interact with text is by modeling with a “think-aloud,” making your thinking and reading processes visible (and audible) to students. For example, science textbooks have many graphics supporting the content, but many students do not always see the relationships between graphics and text. It’s been my experience that taking a little time to model how to make these connections may help students become more independent readers. Some teachers even accompany their students on a “guided tour” of each chapter of the textbook.
If a secondary student cannot decode words, there is certainly a need for intervention by reading specialists. But helping students develop strategies to comprehend text material is an important job of all content teachers. It’s unrealistic to expect our colleagues in the language arts department to teach students how to comprehend science text (and history text and mathematics text) when they have their own curriculum and skills to teach. Many of the reading skills students learn in their other classes can be transferred to science, but they may need some help from us to make the connections.
If you’d like to see how other science teachers address the issue of reading and science in their classes, go to the NSTA store and enter reading as a search term. You’ll get a list of recent NSTA journal articles with a wealth of ideas (journal articles are free to NSTA members). For more information on the “think-aloud” strategy, check out this school district resource and the TeacherVision website.