HOW SHOULD YOU TEACH SCIENCE?
Instructional Guidelines
1. Learn concepts should be emphasized over memorization of terms and facts.
2. Students should have ample opportunities for hands-on inquiry to build investigative skills.
3. Science instruction should be inquiry-based, at least in part. Students should have opportunities to post their own questions, design and pursue their own investigations, analyze data, and present their finding. Students should be doing science through questioning and discovering-not just covering material.
4. Teachers should explain concepts thoroughly before introducing the terminology associated with them to ensure real understanding rather than parroting.
5. Teachers should teach fewer concepts, in greater depth, rather than covering a great many topics superficially. ("Less is more.") Student should build a knowledge base focused on essential concepts, rather than disconnected topics or bits of information.
6. Student should have the opportunity to apply science knowledge and to make connection between what they learn and their everyday lives.
7. Teachers should build on students' prior understandings and prod them to rethink their misconceptions through active investigation. Meaningful science study will aim at developing thinking, problem solving, and attitudes of curiosity, healthy skepticism, and willingness to adjust, adapt, or change misconceptions.
8. All students should become science literate. Schools should prepare science-literate citizens, not just future scientists.
9. Education should begin to integrate the various science disciplines, as well as integrating science with other subject areas. Learning science means integrating reading, writing, speaking, and math.
10. Students need to consider the application of science and technology.
11. Good science teaching involves facilitation (guidance of a group in a problem-solving process) and collaborative group work.
Zemelman and colleagues (1998)
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What ideas and questions do your student bring to science?
Student Questions on a Nature Walk
Take your class on a nature walk around your school building. List the questions that come up.
Student Questions about an Object
Bring a beetle, a growing plant, or a simple machine into your class. List questions that come up.
As you reflect on these two experiences, do you think that there will be a sense of excitement and curiosity in their questions?
Did they ask questions about things you have never thought about, things you might not have connected to what they were doing or seeing?
*This never-ending sense of curiosity, of wanting to know more, is what you have to nuture in your students.
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LEAF Activity
Imagine that one of your students has found an interesting leaf and has brought it in to show during science.
What questions can you ask that will start your students investigating the leaf scientifically. List four questions that will promote investigations.
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INQUIRY LEARNING: an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, and that leads to asking questions, making discoveries, and rigorously testing those discoveries in the search for new understanding.
Inquiry, as it relates to science education, should mirror as closely as possible the enterprise of doing real science.
USING PROCESS SKILLS IN INQUIRY TEACHING
Observing: becoming aware of an object or event by using any of the senses to identify properties; observation is made through one or more of the senses
*Developing observation skills: Take a ten-minute walk around your school. 1. What do you see? 2. What do you hear? 3. What do you smell? 4. Is there anything in the environment you can taste? 5. What can you touch (feel) ?
Measuring: making quantitative observations by comparing to a conventional or nonconventional standard
*Types of measurement: Linear measurement - conventional (ruler) Nonconventional (paper clip); Liquid measurement; Mass/Weight measurement - use a balance
Classifying: sorting objects, events, or information representing objects or events in classes, according to some method or system
Communicating: giving oral or written explanations or graphic representations of observations
*Work with a partner and describe an object that you have selected. Describe the object so clearly and accurately that your partner must be able to identify it on the first try.
Inferring: drawing a conclusion based on prior experiences; an inference is an explanation of an observation or a number of observations; an educated guess based on observations
Predicting: making a forecast of future events or conditions expected to exist
Hypothesizing: constructing a tentative answer to a problem from generalized observations
*Discuss two activities in which students can formulate and then test their hypothesis.
Interpreting Data: analyzing data that have been obtained and organized by determining apparent patterns or relationships in the data; putting several pieces of information together and making some senses of the whole
Controlling Variables: discriminating among facts that will or will not affect the outcome of an experiment; recognizing the variables to be controlled and those to be changed, and how this is to be done.
Experimenting: designing and carrying out procedures to obtain information about interrelationships between objects and events