We Stop for Turtles!

Today after school, my daughter and I were driving home.  As we turned onto a very busy street, we noticed a VERY LARGE turtle topple off the curb and into the street.  The poor guy landed upside down!  I need a bumper sticker that says "I brake for turtles!"  We stopped and picked up the turtle and put him in our car.  We released him into our pond, and I hope he lives happily ever after.

Let the Student Design their Own Experiment

Can we teach our science students how to be successful conducting open-ended labs?

As teachers, we can teach the steps of the scientific method until we are blue in the face.  Many times, all we succeed in doing is having the students memorize the 6 steps to the scientific method and then repeat them on a test.  Too often science teachers conduct laboratory activities in which students follow a list of steps and record an observation at the end.  I need to be one of the first in line to say "Guilty!".  

Today's science educators are pressured to have successful end of course scores.  Sadly, a student can often perform well on these standardized tests without every doing any "real" laboratory work.  One of my goals this year is to change the focus of my class.  I am going to devote the time it takes to allow my students to write and carry out open ended lab experiments.

I have been back in school with my students for one week now.  I have covered the scientific method and gone into great detail on how to design an experiment.  We have mastered (I think!) how to define the experimental group and the control group.  My students can identify the independent and dependent variables.  They understand that only one variable can be changed at a time, and that all other variables must remain constant.  They can write a hypothesis and a conclusion.  We are just about ready to put all we have learned into practice.

I have written a PowerPoint that my students responded to extremely well.  It covers the scientific method with slides that are bright and colorful and visually attractive.  You can download this from my store, Amy Brown Science,  on TeachersPayTeachers.com.  It comes with a set of notes for the teacher and a notes outline for the student.  The student fills in the notes as the lesson is being taught.  I feel that this PowerPoint goes beyond just listing the steps to the scientific method.  Students are given practice problems in which they have to apply what they have learned.  Here is the link to my PowerPoint and notes:  Scientific Method PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student.

You might also want to consider:
Scientific Method Homework
Applying the Scientific Method and Scientific Writing

Coming up this week.... I am taking my students to the lab to conduct their first open ended experiment.  It is going to involve the germination of seeds.  It will be a simple idea and will use only simple supplies.  Perhaps it may end up being more of a "guided" inquiry, but we have to start somewhere, right?  Later this week, I will post about how this goes and have some pictures as well.

Have fun teaching!

Science Illustrated: A Great Resource for the Classroom!

I NEVER want to see this look in my class!!

And I am sure that you do not either.  I am constantly on the look out for tidbits of new and/or interesting science news to use in my classroom.  My students look forward to "Hey guys, did you hear about "blah blah blah" on the news?"  Or,  "Hey guys, look at this cool video I found!"

This does not distract from the objectives of the day, and it only takes just a few minutes.  But the pay-off is huge in terms of student interest in my class.

One of my favorite sites for information is Science Illustrated online.  The news is current, fun, exciting, and most importantly....not too lengthy!!  I love that there is a wide range of areas to choose from:  Science, Nature, Technology, Space, Culture, and Medicine.

You will find a wide range of articles, glorious and interesting photographs and short video clips.

Have Fun Teaching!!

Do you love Pinterest?

Are you a Pinterest addict yet?

If you have not taken a look at this site yet, then don't delay!  Head that way right now.  Pinterest is the latest craze and people are pinning like mad.  What are they pinning?  Just everything under the sun, from recipes, to clothes, to science products (!), to favorite books and movies.  Pinterest is like a huge bulletin board.  If you have something you like, you can pin it to a board that you have created.

I hope that you will check out all of my boards.  Most of my boards are related to teaching science and you will find some great teaching materials there.  I have also found some terrific recipes on Pinterest and have pinned them to my "recipe" board.  The chocolate souffle recipe I found is to die for!

Check out my pin boards here:  Science Stuff on Pinterest!  I would love for you to become one of my Pinterest followers.

Science Skills: Using Graphic Organizers to Master Science Information

We all know that the volume of information in a science textbook is overwhelming for many of our students.  Take time at the beginning of the school year to teach some simple skills to help your students learn to organize the information into a manageable form.  We have a saying in my classroom:  "Be the master of the information.  Do not let the information master you."

With just a little direction students can learn a few techniques that will help them master the information all year long.   Science is so orderly and logical that the use of graphic organizers as a study technique makes perfect sense.  There are many different types of organizers, but the ones that work best for me are concept maps, event chains and cycle maps.

At the beginning of each year, I take the time to teach this important skill to my students.  I give them passages to read and then we practice organizing the information using either a concept map, an events chain or a cycle map.

At first I give the students a diagram to fill in, such as the one seen below:

But very quickly I have my students designing and drawing their own concept maps.  Once students get the hang of the technique, many of them find it to be a fun and enjoyable way to study!

Graphic Organizers: Tools for Mastering Science Concepts

HELP! The science vocabulary is killing me!!

Anyone who has ever taught or taken a science class knows exactly what is meant by the title of this article!

Students of all ages, enrolled in all sorts of different science classes, are faced with this age old problem.  I think there must be a conspiracy going on.  I think there is a little room somewhere, where the great scientific minds come together and challenge each other to come up with the wildest and most difficult words possible.  I actually had a student say this in class once!  As if learning the scientific concepts wasn't already hard enough, let's throw out anthocyanin, bioluminescence and cephalization!

Sometimes I feel like I am beating my students over the head with vocabulary words!  I teach my class in a very conceptual way.  I want them to UNDERSTAND concepts such as protein synthesis, photosynthesis and cellular respiration.  The understanding of the process is more important than being able to spout off a bunch of fancy words.  However, in order to explain and understand the concept, the student must be versed in basic vocabulary that can be used to explain the idea.

I start off each and every new school year with an activity called "What's in a Name?"  This activity contains 50 prefixes and and 30 suffixes that are commonly used in the vocabulary words of a life science or biology class.  I have the students practice making words with the prefixes and suffixes and I also give them a list of words that they have to decipher.

Take, for example, the words I listed above:

• Anthocyanin:  "Anthos" means flower and "cyan" means blue.  These are blue, purple and red pigments found in flowers.
• Bioluminescence:  "Bio" means life and "lumin" refers to light.  This is the production of light by living organisms in certain chemical reactions.
• Cephalization:  "Cephal" refers to the head.  This is the formation of the brain in the anterior part of the body...the head.

By providing your students with a basic set of prefixes and suffixes, and requiring that they learn these at the beginning of the year, you have given your students a tool that can be used all year long.  I require that my students memorize my list, and we quickly have a test on the terms on the list.  The students will moan and groan, but they will already know many, if not most, of the terms on the list:  micro, macro, bio, photo, cyan, poly, di, mono, etc.

After doing this exercise with my students, I see the reward of it all year long.  It is such a great feeling, when later in the year, I see a student breaking a word down into individual parts and realizing that they can give a basic definition to a word they have never seen before!

Have fun teaching!

Here's the link to: Biology Prefixes and Suffixes: Master the Science Vocabulary

Science Skills: Teach Them Early and Teach Them Hard!

Nail down these skills early in the school year!

At the beginning of each new school year, it is essential that a science teacher instruct his/her students in the basic science skills.  No matter what your curriculum calls for, your students will best be served by a review and reinforcement in these basic areas.  This includes laboratory safety,  instruction in how the lab equipment operates, making proper scientific measurements, how to apply the scientific method, the importance of graphing and data analysis, and a review of basic math skills such as scientific notation.  I have already posted about several of these. Today, I want to emphasize the proper use of lab equipment and how to make scientific measurements.

During a lab, a variety of tools may be used to allow the student to use an inquiry process to gather information, both qualitatively and quantitatively.  If the student is to reach the desire conclusion, it is imperative that they be previously instructed on the proper use of the equipment they will be using. Scientists use a variety of tools to explore the world around them, and these tools are important to the advancement of science.  The tools may be simple or very complex.  One of the first labs I complete with my students is called:  Use of Lab Equipment and Data Analysis.  (You can download this one for free!)  It provides instruction on the basic pieces of lab equipment such as the meter stick, Celsius thermometer, graduated cylinder, and the quadruple-beam balance.  Obviously, these pieces of equipment are used for measurements in length, volume, and mass, and they will be used by the students all year long.  As I plan for the first few days of school, I always question whether or not I should spend the time on this lab.  I feel that students should reach my class with these skills already in place.  However, I realize year after year, that all students do not reach me with the same skill sets.  For some students this will simply be a review and reinforcement, but other students will come to me with no knowledge of these skills at all.

When teaching the proper use of lab equipment, you must also give adequate instruction in how to make precise and accurate scientific measurements. I find that many students will need a short re-fresher on the metric system.  As for accuracy and precision in making measurements, it is the nature of the teenagers I teach to rush, rush, rush to get through with the experiments, giving little thought to whether or not their data seems reasonable or logical.  If and when time allows, I often require my students to run multiple trials during an experiment to verify their results.  Unfortunately, due to the nature of a school setting, students have learned that science occurs in a 45 minute period of time, and that the first set of data is perfect and acceptable. We, as teachers, do what we can do with the schedule forced upon us by our schools, but you must try to give opportunities that require students to repeat and verify lab data.

Here are some of the materials that I have developed to help with the instruction and reinforcement of these science skills:

Use of Lab Equipment and Data Analysis -- FREE!!!

Scientific Method PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student 

Science Skills Mega Bundle containing 54 science skill products for your classroom.

Happy Teaching!!