Science Instruction, Old and New

Traditional science lessons focused on “teaching the processes, not just the outcomes, of science,” and it “often involved no more than memorizing and reproducing the steps of an experiment”(Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 403). This is exactly what I remember from most of my science class experiments, especially those taught in high school. We would usually be given a background scenario and the opportunity to build a hypothesis…which is a form of inquiry, in a way, but since the end result was usually known and always concrete, there was no need and typically no room for creativity. I would, sometimes unbeknownst to my teachers, take creativity into my own hands, as mentioned in the last answer, and “tweak” a variable in some way to see if the outcome would change. Like I said, sometimes unbeknownst, when I would get caught being “defiant” by deviating from the “experiment” it was generally because something would start smoking or an outcome would change drastically. I’d get in trouble, but I’d say it was for science’s sake. I used to wonder why we would even bother with making “hypotheses” since we already knew what was going to happen. When the end goal in a science lab is presented or known it can thwart a student’s creativity and imagination towards and/or within that scientific thinking. Donovan & Bransford refer to that “thwarting” as a “lockstep approach”, an approach that shortchanges observation, imagination and reasoning (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 405).  

topinfopost.com 

 

Einstein, one of imagination’s biggest supporters, saw the connection between his scientific knowledge and how he acquired it. “One of the most important aspects of science-yet perhaps one of the least emphasized in instruction-is that science involves processes of imagination” (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 406). Interestingly, although we know this is the way the world’s most ingenious scientists “learned” to do what we remember them for, we’ve failed as educators to encourage our students to think in the same ways, through our modeling and instruction. Donovan & Bransford suggest we teach our students science differently, as imagination plays a huge part in how our students learn science (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 406). It’s beneficial to give them opportunities to experience real inquiry labs, not just “inquiry times” appended to the curriculum (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 405). Allowing them to look beyond what they “know”, or to look beyond their current understanding, as Einstein advocated, through imagination, is key.
 

 

This quarter in Science in 3^rd grade we are learning about forces and motion. MCPS’s “Enduring Understandings” for this quarter include: “A force is required for any change in motion, changes in position and motion can be observed and measured, and tools, materials, and skills are used to carry out a task, conduct an investigation, or address a problem.” MCPS’s “Essential Questions” for this quarter include: “How evidence is collected about changes in motion, what evidence can be collected to describe changes in position and motion, and what factors affect changes in motion?” NGSS says that students who demonstrate knowledge of standard 3-PS2 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions will be able to: “Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.” and “Make observations and/or measurements of an object’s motion to provide evidence that a pattern can be used to predict future motion.” (NGSS, 2011, 2012, 2013).  In short students are introduced to the basic concepts of Physics properties, including motion, gravitational pull, surface friction and Sir Isaac Newton’s first and third laws of motion.

 

During the first couple weeks of school we discussed, tested and observed examples of force and motion and the effects of gravity. I begin all of my lessons, STEM related or not, with some kind of inquiry. In the case of the aforementioned concepts, I one day showed my students a picture of a sliding board and a basketball and asked them to write a prediction and draw a diagram of the trajectory of the ball if dropped from the top of the slide.

 

Slide shown with student trajectories drawn by students in my class.

 

I then gave each table several slender rectangular prisms, foam cubes and small plastic balls and masking tape and clay and challenged them with building a model structure similar to a sliding board to test their theories about the trajectories of the basketball. After many trials and observations, we went outside and tested our theories on a real basketball and a real sliding board. Through much discussion the students decided that gravity was the cause of the ball falling down the slide and were able to conclude the basis for Newton’s first law, also known as the Law of Inertia. Once their theories were proven or disproven I asked them to brainstorm ways in which they could push or pull the basketball back up the slide without using their hands. They devised ways to move the ball, used the same materials as mentioned before plus string and rulers and built prototypes and tested their models using the basketball and the sliding board.

 

During the next couple weeks we discussed, tested examples of and observed the effects of surface friction on motion. I incorporated forces on bridge designs and surface friction into these lessons because we’d just read a book called Javier Build’s a Bridge, an engineering book about a boy who needed to build a bridge. After reading the book, and discussing and testing bridge types, we decided as a class we’d build beam bridges. I gave each table group slender rectangular prisms, foam cubes and tape, clay and rubber bands and challenged them with building a sturdy bridge that could support the weight and mass of a toy car, along with other specifications including not being able to physically touch the car to make it go from one side to the other, using the materials provided. I then asked them to brainstorm ways in which we could “see”  how long it takes for the toy car to get from one side to the other after being pushed to get them to understand when to use certain materials and why we use them. A few friends suggested we time the span using a cell phone or a stop watch, so I gave them stop watches. After timing four trials, I asked them to brainstorm ways in which they could slow the car down using these materials: sand, glue, tape and/or felt. They used the different materials and the Engineering Design Process to redesign bridges with more surface friction. They used the stop watches to make sure their cars were in fact traveling slower after being pushed. We then discussed surface friction and its effect on moving objects.

I believe this pedagogical approach allowed my students to use their imaginations and creativity to devise bridge designs and build them, and then to redesign those bridges to make them answer an engineering design question. I didn’t give them any answers and very few prompts, if any. I had them draw all of their conclusions on their own and with their classmates help. Students were given the opportunity to use their artistic and creative juices to create visuals, with labels, of these models. I think this method of teaching the aforementioned concepts allowed for imaginative and creative freedom, within a goal or as Donovan & Bransford put it, it allowed them to use their “observation, imagination, and reasoning about the phenomena under study” (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 405). This should, in turn “extend their everyday experiences of the world and help them organize data in ways that provide new insights into phenomena” (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 405).

 

Written in response to this question.

Donovan, Suzanne M. & Bransford, John D. (2005). How Students Learn. Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers

Oh those preconceptions...

www.math.ucsd.edu 

 

One example of a preconception students may have the authors provide is that “properties are generally believed to belong to objects rather than to emerge from interactions” (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 399), another example of a preconception that students bring to the classroom is the idea that math is ridiculously difficult and that it has very few practical uses. This in turn causes some students to believe that math just happens in math class and never anywhere else. So much that when they are introduced to mathematical situations in “real life” they often result to either asking someone else, using a calculator/computer or just giving up on the issue entirely.

I was one of those students who held quite a few preconceptions about “doing” math and applying math knowledge to “real life” mathematical situations. I always enjoyed school and learning! It never really mattered much to me what I was learning, I just had a good time because it always seemed so fun. It was fun, and it was easy. My mom has been teaching for years and I was one of her first students. I knew many things that my peers did not simply because she’d taught them to me years before I was required to “know” them in school. In kindergarten I was so advanced mathematically that when everyone else in my class was pulling out their counting chips, I was on my way over to the “big school” to take math with the second graders. That was a big thing for me and I loved it!! By the time I got to middle school I really thought I was quite the math and science wiz because I (and a couple hundred other kids) were interviewed and selected to go to this brand new magnet school, and my magnet was Math, Science and Computer Applications. The way we were taught math and science made me even more interested in it, it also allowed me to see how practical and relevant math and science really were. There were tons of inquiry opportunities and chances to show our creative designs and processes. We used our hands and our imaginations to learn just about everything and it stuck!! Of course I can’t remember everything we did, or what all we learned for that matter, but what I do know is that by the time I got to high school I felt totally different about the maths and sciences. In high school, math and science consisted of books, books and more books. It became nothing more than definitions and expected outcomes. I quickly lost interest. Donovan & Bransford even say that “If students are not helped to experience this (inquiry) for themselves, science can seem dry and highly mechanical. Indeed, research on students' perceptions of science indicates that they see scientific work as dull and rarely rewarding, and scientists as bearded, balding, working alone in the laboratory, isolated and lonely” (pg.406).

 

 

http://laschoolreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/scientist.jpg

 

My grades didn’t reflect it though. I guess because I had good study skills and work habits, I was able to “figure it on out” but my cognition did. I absolutely began to loathe math. I still loved science because at least we got to dissect some things, but math meant absolutely nothing to me whatsoever. It was taught in isolation and conceptually, that’s the way I began to look at it. I took all the maths there were to take by the time I finished 11^th grade and I thought, finally the torture of this that is math is over, but my mom had other ideas…as usual, so she insisted I continue to take maths I didn’t even need, so I took Calculus and College Algebra. Big blah. I grew so tired of formulas and algorithms and “cookie cutter” ways to “solve” problems I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was no creativity allowed at all.

 

www.toledoblade.com 

 

There wasn’t much allowed in science either, but at least, if we were dissecting something I could possibly remove or puncture another organ to see what might happen, without my teacher noticing, but that was pretty much the extent of it. My understanding of math was limited and incorrect, I absolutely hated it, and what’s more, I could find absolutely no use for what I was being taught outside of the class. Although I still earned A’s and B’s in advanced math classes, I somehow knew I still didn’t understand it. I knew that because if I was challenged with say for instance the simplest of mathematical understanding like multiplying or dividing some numbers mentally I’d have to grab a sheet of paper…disgraceful. The truth is math is practical and can be quite fun to learn.

 

Although the piece I'm referencing deals primarily with science instruction, I think subject pedagogy can be interchangeable, meaning that we can apply best practices in one subject to another. My preconceptions about math gained in high school changed my whole outlook on math. I thought math and eventually science had to be rigid and complex because that’s what I’d been taught through implications. When educators teach subjects like math and science in isolation and without imaginative flexibility students who used to be fascinated with doing that subject can lose interest.
 

www.carnegiesciencecenter.org 

 

Donvan & Bransford suggest teachers teach in ways that allow and even perpetuate their students to undergo changes in their thinking and noticing in order to ensure understanding (pg. 401). This is a more productive approach to teaching subject matters. Similarly, a more productive way of thinking about the preconceptions students bring is to accept that they have them and know how to encourage them to dispel them through self-exploration. According to this section of the reading, teachers should engage students preconceptions about a subject or subject matter, in order for to learn more about that subject or subject matter (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 399).  Teaching students maths and sciences, and other subjects for that matter, in a way that is relevant to them is most effective. This way of teaching students who come with preconceptions about certain subjects and subject matters allows them to shed those ideas in return for deeper understanding. How Students Learn promotes an overarching theme of inquiry based teaching, which I think is of utmost importance. This pedagogical approach encourages students to take control of their own learning, which in turn makes them own what they’ve learned. This is different from just learning something because your teacher says you have to.

 

www.pivotaleducation.com 

The text suggests the way we were taught science was insufficient. It plainly says “simply telling students what scientists have discovered is not sufficient to support change in their existing preconceptions about important scientific phenomena” (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, pg. 398).  I decided I wouldn’t teach math or science the way I was taught a long time ago. I wanted to make sure math and science meant something to my students and that it wasn’t just taught in solidarity; I also wanted to make sure I taught my students in a way that their preconceptions about subject matters were supported or dispelled, but at least addressed. In short, I teach concepts so that they’re relevant and fun. I build my lessons around my student’s inquiry about subject matters. Of course I have indicators I am supposed to teach, and I teach them, but I teach them in ways that my students can understand and own them.
 

 

For example, starting lessons with an objective reading can be beneficial for students because it lets them know what the goal is for that particular subject for that day. It can be counter effective though if you’re using an inquiry based approach that would require students to come to a conclusion on what they’ve learned. I combine the two concepts by posting the objectives, but only addressing them after they’ve been done. Similarly, I never present my students with vocabulary words and their definitions when beginning a lesson. I will however ask them what they already know about a relevant vocabulary word and then have them share that knowledge with the person beside them. We “find answers” together and I encourage them to find multiple ways in which to do answer questions and complete challenges. I never give them the answer to anything, whether it’s “What’s today’s date?” or “Can you spell a word for me?” I make it the expectation in my classroom that they use their resources and brains to find answers to questions they have. I believe this approach to teaching inspires my students to think critically and problem solve, not just when doing classwork but all the time. It also makes them find answers on their own, which helps them internalize what they’ve learned and hopefully with that knowledge, they will see other ways in which to apply what they’ve learned. These examples I believe reflect what Donvan & Bransford and the other authors of this piece had in mind.

 

Written in response to this question.

Donovan, Suzanne M. & Bransford, John D. (2005). How Students Learn. Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers

Hey Area!!: A Mathematics Lesson for Area Teaching

 

So, if you're anything like me...you love to teach. Maybe you don't necessarily love Math but because you teach it every day you've learned to live with it. I guess that's an okay way to consider it, but is it an effective enough approach to teach someone mathematical concepts?? I'll let you be the judge but I learned a long time ago that if I was going to have this beautiful relationship with Science that I had to at the very least, maintain a working relationship with his cousin Math. My mathematical knowledge is my student's mathematical knowledge. How can we expect our students to "get" and enjoy Maths if we don't ourselves. Sure you could just "make it work" but just how effective is making it work?? We can ask Congress about the results of that kind of thinking. Teachers must understand and be nimble with the concepts they teach their students in order for their students to get the most out of coming to school each and every day. Love what you do and know how to do it!!

This and other posts like it can help you understand more about the concepts you're teaching in order to make your teaching more effective and your students more effective learners.

Area is one mathematical concept that can be quite fun to learn about and teach. I post the objectives for each subject every day on my blackboard. I used to have my students read the objective before we began a lesson so they would know what they were going to be doing before they did it. I found that when I explicitly told them what they'd be responsible for, the inquiry part of the entire lesson was lost. I now have them discuss the objective after the lesson as a way to "check" to see if we've done what we needed to do. The objective for this lesson was: We will use our collaboration and analysis skills to describe and represent area as a measure of cover using square units.

On the first day of the lesson I showed my students the flipchart page below and gave them a set of "square units" (also shown) to use in order to make the rectangular shapes referred to. I challenged them to make as many different rectangular shapes as they could. Although they were having a ball, they were also making sense of what it means to make equal shares, practicing making 2-d rectangular shapes, utilizing counting, addition and multiplication skills and deciding on how many square units were needed in order to cover an area...all while "playing around" with squares.

 

 

The next day our objective was the same. Our challenge however was different. After practicing counting square units in different areas I asked them to predict how many square units they thought it would take to fill in the area of the first letter in my name which is a "T".

 

 After they made their predictions and some shared them, we proved our predictions correct or incorrect by physically filling in the square units on the Promethean Board.

 

  

After which I gave them a sheet of square units and challenged them to find out how many square units it would take to make the first letter in their name.

 

 

The next day we put our new found skills to work and did a few of these exercises as a clss to reinforce the idea that area refers to a measure of cover. We also "played around" with square units again to remind students of where we started and where we've arrived.

 

Finally I gave my friends the opportunity to show me what they knew themselves, with no one else's help. The activities below are some examples of the exercises I gave them to assess their content knowledge. The sheets are successive, meaning that the first sheet you see is the first one I gave them on the first day of practice, the second sheet on the second and so on. Similar sheets were given to them for homework each day so they could practice what they'd learned in school at home with their parents.

 

 

 

 

As always, if you have ActivInspire, the link is here: Hello!

 

 

Forces on Bridges!!! A STEM Lesson for Bridge Lovers

Sooooo, you've been tasked with teaching your little friends about forces and motion, and you're trying to figure out how to tie all of the measured concepts together into something relevant AND fun...have them relate forces and motion to bridges!! :) I begin each and every one of my lessons with some form of inquiry, whether it's a STEM related lesson or not. I always ask my friends "Why?" first before we learn about theories, laws and ideologies...No I don't teach college students, I teach third grade. :)  Professional and scholarly research supports this type of model as a great way to initiate and foster learning, so why not??

 After allowing them to share with their friends their ideas on why we have bridges, I show them the parts of a typical bridge. I don't however, tell them why each bridge part is necessary...I let them come to their own realizations as to why, first alone, then with their groups...and then as a class. We arrive at all conclusions as a class!!

Then we discuss the most common types of bridges there are. We discuss arch bridges, suspension bridges and beam bridges. Again I challenge my students to differentiate between bridge types and possible reasons to use one bridge design as opposed to another. The next few graphics show the progression of the lesson.

I then present my friends with scenarios and challenges...aka Laboratories that require them to use their science and mathematical knowledge to engineer examples of technology. In this case I have challenged my friends with devising a bridge design that will hold a moving toy car, the catch is that the car cannot be pushed or pulled by human hands, requiring students to come up with other ways to move the toy car. I have them test materials that could be used in their designs before they actually begin any constructing. This gives them an opportunity to brainstorm and make conclusions on which of the given materials would provide the least and the most amount of friction, it will also allow them to work with balancing objects and adding necessary supports. Then I have them redesign their bridges, during this stage however, I asked that they make the car reach the other side in as slowly a time as possible.  

And that's how you do it!!

Oh, if you have a whiteboard and use the software ActivInspire, here's a link to download the entire flipchart, if not, you can use the links below to facilitate the lab discussed above, complete with directions for your students and data collection space. Have fun! Have STEM!

Challenge One

 Data Collection for Challenge One

 Challenge Two

 Data Collection for Challenge Two