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Part I. Student Ideas Are the Raw Material of Our Work -- Part II. Real Science, Real Students -- Part III. Science Teacher Learning.
Most important to being a good science teacher is holding the expectation that all students can be scientists and think critically. Providing a thinking curriculum is especially important for those children in diverse classrooms who have been underserved by our educational system. OCo Becoming Scientists. Good science starts with a question, perhaps from the teacher at the start of a science unit or from the children as they wonder what makes a toy car move, how food decomposes, or why leaves change color. Using inquiry science, children discover answers to their questions in the same way that scientists doOCothey design experiments, make predictions, observe and describe, offer and test explanations, and share their conjectures with others. In essence, they construct their own understanding of how the world works through experimentation, reflection, and discussion. Look into real classrooms where teachers practice inquiry science and engage students in the science and engineering practices outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards. Rusty Bresser and Sharon Fargason show teachers how to do the following: Build on students' varied experiences, background knowledge, and readiness; Respond to the needs of students with varying levels of English language proficiency; Manage a diverse classroom during inquiry science exploration; Facilitate science discussions; Deepen their own science content knowledge. As the authors state, Inquiry science has little to do with textbooks and lectures and everything to do with our inherent need as a species to learn about and reflect on the world around us. Join your students on a journey of discovery as you explore your world via inquiry."
2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.
Teaching Science to Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Elementary Students helps K-8 teachers implement culturally relevant instructional strategies to ensure that all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class, can do science, like science, and become scientists if they choose. In America's increasingly diverse classrooms, science is not always presented in a way that is meaningful to all students. With this in mind, this book outlines 8 culturally relevant strategies for teaching science to help ensure all students have access to inquiry-based, interactive, and experiential science learning. Written to encourage inclusive practices, the book shows how to teach science using students' experiences, how to integrate science and literacy and how to use alternative methods to assess students' understanding of science. Includes 8 culturally relevant strategies for teaching science to all students-outlines inclusive practices that ensure all students have access to inquiry-based, interactive, and experiential science learning. Emphasizes family connections and teaching science to and through students' experiences-connects science activities and content to students' lives at home and includes a chapter on fostering family connections and family connections icons throughout the book. Offers examples of science and literacy connections-models how teachers can integrate science and literacy to enhance students' understanding of science. Includes case studies with reflection questions in each chapter-provides examples of culturally relevant science teaching in the K-8 classroom for teachers to analyze and discuss. Offers step-by-step descriptions of four science instructional models, including Concept Attainment, Concept Formation, Group Investigation and 5 Es Model. Devotes a complete chapter to alternative assessment with diverse learners-provides a variety of examples and assessment methods to help teachers gauge students' understanding of science. Presents book study questions-helps teachers discuss the book professionally and apply the information to their current science activities.
With its user-friendly question and answer format, Teaching Health Education in Language Diverse Classrooms guides prospective and current health education teachers in elementary and secondary school settings in designing, implementing, assessing, and evaluating active, achievement focused activities for diverse learners. The activities in this text are designed to increase all student learning, achievement, and success in the learner diverse regular education classroom. Each chapter provides best practices and models for replication and suggestions for instructional success. The variety of instructional strategies in Teaching Health Education in Language Diverse Classrooms helps facilitate the student’s development in critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.
Higher education is a strange beast. Teaching is a critical skill for scientists in academia, yet one that is barely touched upon in their professional training—despite being a substantial part of their career. This book is a practical guide for anyone teaching STEM-related academic disciplines at the college level, from graduate students teaching lab sections and newly appointed faculty to well-seasoned professors in want of fresh ideas. Terry McGlynn’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach avoids off-putting pedagogical jargon and enables instructors to become true ambassadors for science. For years, McGlynn has been addressing the need for practical and accessible advice for college science teachers through his popular blog Small Pond Science. Now he has gathered this advice as an easy read—one that can be ingested and put to use on short deadline. Readers will learn about topics ranging from creating a syllabus and developing grading rubrics to mastering online teaching and ensuring safety during lab and fieldwork. The book also offers advice on cultivating productive relationships with students, teaching assistants, and colleagues.
Forty classroom-ready science teaching and learning activities for elementary and middle school teachers Grounded in theory and best-practices research, this practical text provides elementary and middle school teachers with 40 place-based activities that will help them to make science learning relevant to their students. This text provides teachers with both a rationale and a set of strategies and activities for teaching science in a local context to help students engage with science learning and come to understand the importance of science in their everyday lives.
As a distinctive voice in science education writing, Douglas Larkin provides a fresh perspective for science teachers who work to make real science accessible to all K-12 students. Through compelling anecdotes and vignettes, this book draws deeply on research to present a vision of successful and inspiring science teaching that builds upon the prior knowledge, experiences, and interests of students. With empathy for the challenges faced by contemporary science teachers, Teaching Science in Diverse Classrooms encourages teachers to embrace the intellectual task of engaging their students in learning science, and offers an abundance of examples of what high-quality science teaching for all students looks like. Divided into three sections, this book is a connected set of chapters around the central idea that the decisions made by good science teachers help light the way for their students along both familiar and unfamiliar pathways to understanding. The book addresses topics and issues that occur in the daily lives and career arcs of science teachers such as: • Aiming for culturally relevant science teaching • Eliciting and working with students’ ideas • Introducing discussion and debate • Reshaping school science with scientific practices • Viewing science teachers as science learners Grounded in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), this is a perfect supplementary resource for both preservice and inservice teachers and teacher educators that addresses the intellectual challenges of teaching science in contemporary classrooms and models how to enact effective, reform
In Team Teaching Science, Ed Linz, Mary Jane Heater, and Lori A. Howard demonstrate the truth in the old adage " Two heads are better than one." This guide for developing successful team-teaching partnerships that maximize student learning will help preservice and inservice special education and science teachers in grades K- 12, as well as methods professors in science education programs who want to cover special needs issues in their curriculum. Using both research-based practices and personal insight from experienced team teachers, the authors strive to make team teaching beneficial for students and accessible for teachers. Linz, Heater, and Howard provide background information on science teaching and team teaching and, most important, six chapters on how to teach specific science topics and how a co-teaching team can proceed through the school year.The basic elements of collaboration are introduced, along with chapters on co-teaching strategies to implement in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. The authors, who have years of co-teaching experience, offer practical advice that teachers can apply to their own classrooms. Teaching a diverse group of students is one challenge teachers will likely encounter in a team-teaching environment; the authors address the difficulties that may arise, as well as issues related to assessment, curriculum, and necessary accommodations and modifications. For those tackling the challenges of team teaching, this book will prove to be a valuable resource for making team teaching a positive experience for both students and teachers.
What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as: When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects? What role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science? How can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity? What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning? How can teachers be taught to teach science? The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of scienceâ€"about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science educationâ€"teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.
