Science Teaching Sampler Webinar and Resources

In case you missed it (October 22, 2014), the webinar “College and Career Ready Science Teaching Sampler” can be found in its archived home at http://www.collegetransition.org/resources.webinars.scienceseries.html  

This webinar was produced by the National College Transition Network.  I was pleased to be in the online audience to hear three great speakers: David Rosen, Meghan McNamara, and Cynthia Zafft.  They gave us, as the webinar description promised, “…a tour of free, high-quality science teaching and learning resources available on the Internet”.

The resources highlighted in this webinar can be used effectively in integrated instruction of many important skills, in particular the skill areas of reading, writing, and math/numeracy. Science topics are great vehicles for such integration, because they are often of high interest: issues of human health, environmental concerns, climate, and so forth.  We’d like to follow up with a further discussion of the resources highlighted by the presenters. 

First, David Rosen talked about the Science Videos Project he directs.  These resources can be found through David’s postings on the LINCS Science Community of Practice.  Participants in that review project are members of the LINCS CoP, and additional members are always welcome to join! (just contact David).

In the webinar, David talked about the importance of the WAYS in which instructors use science videos in instruction.  In addition to his reading on the subject, David has interviewed a number of practitioners in order to investigate practical, effective ways for the integration of science videos.  David, could you please give us a description of a successful process in using videos?  What works?  What doesn’t?

 

Comments

Meghan McNamara gave a presentation in a second section of the webinar "Science Teaching Sampler Webinar and Resources".  Meghan is an HSE teacher in the Adultt Learning Center of Lehman College.  She uses the website "Statistics for Action" http://sfa.terc.edu in her teaching.  Meghan's presentation included examples of ways in which reading, writing, math, and critical thinking skills can be emphasized while teaching and learning about an environmental science topic.  Meghan showed us an activity using "A First Look at Technical Documents", which is available at the SfA website in English and in Spanish.  

Meghan, could you please talk a little more about how you use an activity like this to enhance the skills of reading rather difficult (but important) technical documents?  I think this would be of great interest to the Reading and Writing Community of Practice as well as those of us who are members of the Science CoP.  It will be great if members of Reading/Writing respond to this discussion thread!  Thanks!

Susan asked if I could talk more about how I used the activity "A First Look at Technical Documents," from the Statistics for Action website http://sfa.terc.edu, to build students' skills of reading difficult technical documents.   I'll elaborate on that a bit here.

First, this activity provides an approach for dissecting a scientific report in a classroom setting.  You break students into small groups (4-5 students) and give each group a section (I did 1-2 paragraphs) from the document- not an adapted or re-written version, just excerpts of the actual document.  In their groups students read over the text a few times.  Then they are asked to write down on sticky notes a few things: what do they notice?  What is unclear?  What is clear?  What do they have questions about?  Each student comes up with at least two sticky notes.  The notes are then put on the board under five different categories: Definitions; health risks; predictions; actions needed; other questions.  Then as a full group the class discusses what they commented on in each of these categories.

I found this activity to be quite fruitful in my class.  My students are usually at around a 6-7th grade reading level, so I was nervous at first about bringing this type of document into the classroom.  I had done a few activities leading up to this one to build context and background knowledge about the subject (which was BPA, or Bisphenol A, in plastics).  These lead-up activities had gotten students interested so they were willing to put in the time with the scientific report.  I also think they liked the challenge of a more difficult document since it was towards the end of the year and they were complaining that we were doing too much reading from non-test-subject books.

The way the activity is designed is similar, in some ways, to doing a reading "think-aloud".  In a "think-aloud" the reader voices all of the inferences and connections they are making as they read.  In this exercise, using the sticky-note prompts as guiding questions, students asked as they were reading 'do I know what this word means?  Does it sound like anything I've heard before?' and 'is it clear what this sentence is saying, or is it *not* clear to me w/out more information? What other information would I need?'  

Students weren't asked to try to digest the writing and learn facts, instead they were asked to make observations about the text.  What words did they notice being used?  Did they see a certain word or phrase being used a lot?  Is there certain information being left out?  What other information would they need to be able to understand the writing?  Is there anything that sounds like something we discussed in class earlier or something they heard in their own life?  

Treating the text in this way helps students learn strategies for how to approach other texts that might seem impenetrable at first. 

Meghan, thanks so much for giving us this detailed explanation of how you have used the activity "A First Look at Technical Documents" from Statistics for Action.  As you indicate, this activity can be used in multiple ways in adult basic/secondary education classrooms.   This, and the reading "think-aloud" process, are valuable strategies.  They also are in line with the process standards we are asked to emphasize in our teaching. 

Can we hear from others of you who have tried these strategies?  What worked?  What needed tweaking for your particular setting?

 

Cynthia Zafft, of the National College Transition Network, World Education, presented LINCS resources in the third part of the webinar.  Many of you know about the LINCS Learning Portal and its three free LINCS online science courses.  You may also know about the LINCS library of Learning Resources.  Cynthia talked about these resources, and she mentioned a resource "Effective Prompts for Quick Writes in Science and Math".  Cynthia, could you please tell us more about how you and others have used "Quick Writes"?  And other members of the Science community, please add to this discussion.  It would also be great to hear from members of the Reading/Writing and Math/Numeracy communities.

Thanks!

For the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking about a brief publication from the GED Testing Service® that identified the top skills that test-takers missed from January-June 2014.

See  http://www.gedtestingservice.com/uploads/files/126de0283c94ff6323b3b5b3f310da5d.pdf

For the Science test, these included:

>SC.3.a  Pull specific evidence from a written source to support a finding or conclusion.

>SC.6.c  Express scientific information or findings in words.

>SC.7.a  Understanding and apply scientific models, theories, and processes.

While I don’t want high school equivalency tests to drive all our interest in science, their findings did raise a question for me.  How can I help students develop and consolidate their science learning through writing? One of the resources in the LINCS Resource Collection suggests using “quick writes,” a process that allows students to increase their learning without generating instructional and grading demands that move away from the short amount of time typically focused on science.  I’ve done something like this but primarily at the end of class as a short informal assessment that (to be honest) focused more on recall.  This study describes creating prompts that promote richer responses.

“Effective Prompts for Quick Writes in Science and Mathematics (Cleland, Rillero, & Zambo, 2003) is a study of middle school students that examines the use of short, non-graded student “quickwrites” at the beginning of the class period.  Prompts were based on the previous class session.  Students were given a short period of time to respond to an open-ended prompt and then shared their responses in small groups.  Earlier research suggested that the writing and sharing process was more effective that either writing or verbally sharing alone.  You can find the resource here:  http://lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-130

Have you tried something like this? Can you share an example?  Did you find were the benefits and challenges?

Cynthia

 

Cynthia,

Thanks for making this connection with the GED and the top science skills that were missed by those taking the exams from January-June 2014. I am sure that the findings apply to all the high-school equivalency exams in use.  While we don't want the exams to drive instruction, as you say, it seems clear that we need to pay attention to this.  The skills certainly apply to the emphasis on college and career readiness.

So, Cynthia has given us an example of a technique that allows students to increase their learning through writing and sharing.  We would really be interested in the answers to Cynthia's questions: can you share an example and describe what were the benefits and challenges?

 

 

Thanks Susan.

You wrote:

David Rosen talked about the Science Videos Project he directs.  These resources can be found through David’s postings on the LINCS Science Community of Practice.  Participants in that review project are members of the LINCS CoP, and additional members are always welcome to join! (just contact David).

For those who might have missed the earlier postings here:

  • To see the list of science videos appropriate for adult education classes, go to:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19F-_A7T-HcwwCCctxDoGFN0fyrryfKE1I_jG6-sLt1g/edit#

  • To see the reviews of a few of these videos, by teachers of science to adults, go to:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6715575/Science%20Video%20Reviews%208.17.14.docx

  • To join our volunteer LINCS group of science video reviewers here, email me at djrosen123@gmail.com

And you also wrote:

In the webinar, David talked about the importance of the WAYS in which instructors use science videos in instruction.  In addition to his reading on the subject, David has interviewed a number of practitioners in order to investigate practical, effective ways for the integration of science videos.  David, could you please give us a description of a successful process in using videos?  What works?  What doesn’t?

There are many good ways to use science videos, for example to:

  • Introduce new science-related content
  • Review content
  • Stimulate thinking
  • Get students interested or curious about a topic or area
  • Challenge knowledge, concepts, or assumptions
  • Be the content or stimulus for a writing skills assignment (e.g. factual summaries of the science content presented, analysis of the content, or comparison and contrast with other videos, presentations or documents, or with (mistaken) concepts held before watching the video
  • Introduce material that will be also be presented in print, where the purpose is to show phenomena in video that will be described in print, in other words, to provide some grounded experience. For example, if you are teaching about one-celled animals and plants and a student has no knowledge of the microscopic world, you could use a video such as Cosmic Zoom, an eight-minute, 1968 National Film Board of Canada animation that begins with a boy and a dog in a rowboat and then gradually zooms into space; and after about four minutes, returns to the rowboat and then zooms to a microscopic level. You could also use a user-controlled set of images such as The Powers of 10, or The Scale of the Universe. See the science video List for more information these.

Videos, however, are not teachers. They are resources or tools for teachers to use in an engaging, intellectually challenging, and supportive learning context. A video should not be “the lesson” when a teacher is absent; it should not be relied on to teach; and it should not be the only way in which students get exposed to new content (even when, in the teacher’s judgment it may be the best way.) 

I would like every science teacher to watch the eight-minute Derek Muller (physics educator and science video blogger) video that I recommended at the end of my part of the webinar, http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/khan-academy-and-the-effectiveness-of-science-videos/. It’s about why sometimes – even when students think they have learned a lot from watching, in their words, a “clear”, “concise”, “easy-to-understand” video, they haven’t learned much at all, why this is so, and what science video makers and teachers could do differently to achieve deeper learning using the same video in a context that first examines students’ present knowledge and concepts about the topic. Muller persuasively argues that starting with students’ actual  (mis) conceptions results in real learning gains, that just showing a video with accurate information reinforces students’ views that they already know the content (even when they don’t), causes them not to pay the utmost attention, results in their not understanding how what was presented differs from what they were already thinking, and makes them falsely confident in the wrong ideas they had before watching the video.

Have I whetted your appetite to see this video? I hope so!

How do teachers of science here use videos? What works and doesn't work for you and your students?


David J. Rosen

Djrosen123@gmail.com

Thanks, David, for continuing this discussion.  I hope that members of this community of practice will look at the Derek Muller resource that you suggest.  It is thought-provoking.  I would also suggest to community members that you take a look at the archived webinar we are discussing.  At the end of his portion of the webinar, David offered some examples of ways to prepare learners for the video they will see.  They include many of the techniques we use for pre-reading or other preparatory strategies, but applied to video resources.