Session Seven

Session Seven

Science

Big Ideas

• The American Association for the Advancement of Science defines big ideas as – Represents central scientific ideas and organizing

principles– Has rich explanatory and predictive power– Motivates the formulation of significant questions– Is applicable to many situations and contexts

common to everyday experiences

Text Books

• Texts books are the most common tool used to teach science.

• IS this good?

Text Books

• Most textbooks cover too many topics and don’t develop any of them well

• All texts include many classroom activities that are either irrelevant to key science ideas or don’t help students relate what they are doing to the underlying ideas

Text Books

• There are four major problems with textbooks:– Even the best and the brightest students have predictable

difficulties grasping many ideas that are covered in the textbooks

– Textbooks ignore or obscure the most important ideas by focusing instead on technical terms and trivial details ( which are easy to test)

– The illustrations are rarely helpful, because they are too abstract, needlessly complicated or in adequately explained

– Students are given little guidance in interpreting the results of the activities in terms of the scientific concepts to be learned.

Text Books

• Because of these problems with textbooks, many educators feel they are not helpful

• However, textbooks can be very valuable learning tools.

Science

• Some schools have stopped teaching Science and Social studies

• PSSA testing has changed that with science-

Science Instruction

• Should focus on Big Ideas • It should use strategies for using the big ideas

conspicuous• Important concepts of big ideas and component steps

of the strategies are taught• Mediated scaffolding should provide a smooth

transition to independent success• Judicious review is provided• The consistent strategically integrated for the greatest

efficiency is learning

Science Instruction

• Science Inquiry- scientific Method• Science Inquiry- the ability to test hypotheses

is a crucial truth seeking skills in both formal scientific and informal contexts

• Few adults have this ability- to confront informal beliefs in an honest manner using this scientific method

Science Inquiry Instruction

• One big component in teaching science is to help students identify patterns in their observations

• Second – scientific inquiry is effectively controlling variables- controlling variables means that in order to isolate the effect of a variable. Students must be able to identify other variables as well

Science Instruction

• A common misconception in teaching science is that inquiry instructional method are preferable to explicit instructional methods for teaching students how to do inquiry

• Research that compares inquiry based methods with explicit based research finds that explicit results in better learning- this is especially true for students with low academic achievement and do not understand inquiry

Science Instruction

• A common misconception in teaching science is that inquiry instructional method are preferable to explicit instructional methods for teaching students how to do inquiry

• Research that compares inquiry based methods with explicit based research finds that explicit results in better learning- this is especially true for students with low academic achievement and do not understand inquiry

Science Instruction

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Science Instruction

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Science Instruction

Is this a mudge

Science Instruction

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Science Instruction

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Science Instruction

Is this is a mudge

What is the rule you developed

Science Instruction

Is this is a mudge

What is the rule you developed

• What you did was observe, develop a hypothesis and test your variable. You could do it further, if we wanted. We did not test it to the end.

Big Ideas in science

• Nature of science• Energy transformation• Gravity• Flow of matter in ecosystems• The independence of life

Domains in Science

• Earth (geology)• Ocean ( oceanography)• Atmosphere ( meteorology)

Good Big ideas

• Good big ideas in science can be applied in many domains in science– Earth (geology)- plate tectonics– Ocean ( oceanography)- thermo circulation– Atmosphere ( meteorology) wind weather

currents

Good Big ideas• Well designed instruction in big ideas allows for more

efficient use of times.• Because of the foundational understanding and

connection established the big ideas , the teacher cover a greater amount of meaningful content while teaching fewer principles

• As students apply the big ideas across other domains of science, these big ideas function as prior knowledge within which students can easily assimilate new learning with appropriate elaboration rather than learning everything as new

Good Big ideas• Well designed instruction in big ideas allows for more

efficient use of times.• Because of the foundational understanding and

connection established the big ideas , the teacher cover a greater amount of meaningful content while teaching fewer principles

• As students apply the big ideas across other domains of science, these big ideas function as prior knowledge within which students can easily assimilate new learning with appropriate elaboration rather than learning everything as new

Component Ideas in Science

• Component ideas are essential elements that must be identified when attempting to teach and big idea, including those identified as benchmarks or standards within the national science reform initiatives

• Example- a cause and effect relationship between and among the phenomena of heating and cooling, density, force and pressure


• Specific instruction in the component section of science is necessary in order to build understanding of big ideas such as convection

• Substance to expand becomes less dense and substances move from a place of high pressure to a place of low pressure


Strategies in Science

• Students need to learn strategies to apply the big ideas and their components concepts in a variety of ways

• The strategies necessary for effective problem solving and learning in science are literally the the application of big ideas

• Students need to be able to predict what will happen to variables


• Once big ideas are learned in simple form, they should be applied in more abstract situations

• Problem solving lends itself to learning big ideas

• When teaching problem solving, visuals, concept maps pictures are very helpful


• Research has shown, that expert problem solvers and novice problem solvers differ I three ways– Have more knowledge– The knowledge is better organized in a hierarchical

structure– The hierarchical structure is around explanatory

principles that function as big ideas


• Build into lessons “refutational “ test- this is the ability to anticipate what misconception the students may have and build it into the instruction

• Deal with the misconception- build in examples that directly confront the misconception


• Don’t assume that Hands-on learning is always better

• Hands-on activity should be used in initial instruction only when they are concretely relevant to the concept being taught

• Hands-on activities would certainly be relevant where physical texture is an important element to understanding


• Initial instruction should be interactive, conspicuous and teacher directed

• There should be a great deal of teacher direction until the students can be independent

Strategies in ScienceScaffolding

• Initial instruction should be teacher directed, it could be interactive, but teacher directed

• As proficiency develops with concepts, scaffolding takes the form of of less teacher direction and more students directed

Strategies in ScienceScaffolding

• Two types – Involvement of teacher directedness. – Scaffolding of examples- teacher structures the

examples so it guarantees success until the students become somewhat proficiency

Strategies in ScienceReview

• Varied practice contributes to students generating more ideas for solving problem, having higher quality ideas asking better questions, asking better questions and more successfully solving problem

• Review should consists of application of ideas• Make the application a bit more challenging

each time.


• The review should be distributed over time than massed all at once.


• The fundamental steps in the strategy for science inquiry– Indentify the variables to test– Create a condition that changes that variables– Keep the other variables the same– Gather data– Interpret the outcome

Documents

Session Seven