Search results matching tags 'teaching science' and 'curriculum'

Elementary education science, Part 1

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:34:00 GMT

I am sitting on a committee put together to help redesign our elementary school science curriculum.
I'll be tossing out various posts on the topic. The posts do not reflect the views of anyone except me.

By the end of Grade 4:
Science has unique norms for participation. These include adopting a critical stance, demonstrating a willingness to ask questions and seek help, and developing a sense of trust and skepticism.

NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards, 5.1.4.D.1, Science

A few of us in the district have a wonderful opportunity to help draft the science curriculum guidelines for early elementary students. We--teachers from various grade levels-- have been given professional time to work together to develop science education at the elementary level.

While I am a high school science teacher, I am leaning heavily on my former life as a pediatrician. You cannot separate science from perception, and perception gets colored by development.

Separating science as a discipline separate from language development does not make sense to me, at least not for the lunchbox crowd. It may be a subset of language, as fairy tales are a subset of story telling, but until children can master mathematics, Boolean logic, and other developmentally challenging tasks, pretending that they are little scientists is, well, ridiculous.

A lot of people are getting paid good money to promote the ridiculous.

***

What can a child know?

She can know what she observes, of course, but what she observes depends, in large part, on what she knows. We frame our world more than we might realize.

Many of our children come to high school with what seem to be nonsensical ideas, but which reflect the thoughts of thousands of years of human thought--if these thoughts are not consistent with the last few hundred years, we tell the children, without offering much evidence, that they are wrong.

If a child believes she can see in absolute darkness, and many believe as much, telling her that is simply not so is not ~~science~~ education, it's indoctrination.

At the early grade levels, the standard listed above does not hold water. "Adopting a critical stance, demonstrating a willingness to ask questions and seek help, and developing a sense of trust and skepticism" should be the heart of all education, not the box labeled "science."

The photo has nothing to do with the post--I just like it.

6:38 P.M.

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:04:00 GMT

6:38 P.M. here--the sun stood still, shifted its mass, and headed back north.

6 months ago, when we sat on the opposite side of the sun, I celebrated the summer solstice, a joy tinged with the weight of knowing the sun would start its slow, long course southward.

Winter is only hours old, and winters can be brutal here. The light, however is returning.

When I was a child, winter meant cold, summer heat. I did not, could not, grasp why the elders got so excited late December, at the cusp of winter, when we faced long wintry days.

I get it now.

***

I stood outside last night in the chill with my youngest, now a quarter century old, watching our shadow drift across the moon, a wavering copper-gold washing in from the moon's left.

My mom used to tell me she could see me as an infant even as I stood before her as a man. I laughed, of course. I am big--over 200# big.

I get it now.

***

I still give tests, more out of habit than sense now. Performance on science tests a few days before the Christmas break follow a predictable pattern, and my students did not fail to fail.

We do a lot of things because we do them. If mastery's the goal, then a class average of low 70's with a bell-shaped curve, a science teacher's dream a generation ago, marks my failure.

On my board today two-foot numbers announced the time of the solstice--6:38 P.M. Solstice literally means the sun stands still.

Very few students notice how far the sun has shifted since class started just 3 1/2 months ago. There's no need. Food comes in boxes, heat in radiators. The whole world of technique is magic to them.

In Ireland this morning, the sun rose, as it has, as it will. A shaft of sunlight flashed through a chamber in Newgrange built thousands of years ago, before the Great Pyramids, before the Celts arrived, before Stone Henge.

We will not study this in science, nor will our students study this in history class. We will create a class ready for the 21st century, for the abstract, for a culture that confuses bank profits with economy.

***

If children owned the winter solstice, the dying light, knowing what waits for each of us before a 100 winter solstices pass, would they come to school?

Would you?

I believe schools can be worth the time children invest in them. I am not convinced we're there yet.

At least not as long as I keep practicing education as religion, using a script written generations before me.

Science ***

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:57:00 GMT

No 8 year old in her right mind is curious about Neptune.
She does like to make Mommy happy, though.

If a young adult told you in class that she does not believe that the Earth revolves around the sun, what would you say?

Who's the better scientist, the child who accepts heliocentrism by the time she's out of elementary school, or the high school student who trusts her eyes over her teachers?

It's all relative, this motion thing, and, of course, heliocentrism works well for those who have the background to understand it.

But geocentrism works, too. It's just slightly more complicated.

The ancient Greeks could predict eclipses. As far as I know, none of my lambs can (yet):

A piece of science shatters each time child builds a model of our solar system while still in grade school. We are asking children to accept something beyond their comprehension on faith alone, surrounded with rites developed in school, rites that preclude thought.

Children have more evidence that Santa exists (cookies eaten, NORAD, and, of course, presents) than that the sun is the center of our world (pictures in books, balls on wires, and the teacher's word).

None of my students believes in Santa Claus anymore, but just about all of them believe the Earth revolves around the sun. Many of them also believe we never landed on the moon, that the world will end in 2012, and that evolution is bunk.

Because people of authority told them so.

Google "solar system science fair projects." You will find pictures of children, smiling with that I-made-an-adult-proud grin, standing next to their work. The projects are flash and glitter, science ***, rites of passage that reward children who bleat baaa.

My young student lives in the universe of Aristotle and Tycho Brahe. She's still thinking.
Despite being trained not to....

Again, Tom Hoffman's "In My Head" got me going this morning, this time a link to here.
Image of solar system model from CraftCritique.com here.

More "New Jersey World Class Standards"

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:50:00 GMT

5.2.2.A.2
By the end of Grade 2:
Identify common objects as solids, liquids, or gases.

Throw plasma in there, the most common state of matter known in the universe. You have common examples in the classroom, the incessant hum of fluorescent lights above. You have great examples outside, the sun and the stars. Some students may have plasma televisions at home.

How many teachers have been tripped up by this "simple" question: what is the sun made of?

If you want to keep a state of matter up your sleeve, save the Bose-Einstein condensate for high school.

5.2.4.A.3
By the end of Grade 4:
Objects and substances have properties, such as weight and volume, that can be measured using appropriate tools.

I spent weeks teasing apart weight and mass in a freshman science class. Mass is, at this level anyway, the amount of matter (call it "stuff") in something.

Weight is a measure of the force of gravity on the stuff you are measuring. It depends on where all the other objects in the universe happen to be at that moment, since everything is pulling on everything else.

The closest huge ball of stuff is the Earth, so weight and mass seem synonymous.

They're not--your mass does not change on the moon, but your weight does--but you knew this already. Even 2nd graders know this. You can show them astronauts jumping around the moon and ask them why they can jump so high. They'll parrot the standard answer ("less gravity").

I suspect most of us are afraid to touch gravity because we just plain don't get it.

I would love to start the year with a class full of young adults who get that we don't get it.
That's how science starts.

Really.....

The states of matter graphic comes from Chem4Kids.com.
The moon clip from YouTube, uploaded by Amontai Yagala

It gets worse...

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:32:00 GMT

More "science" from the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards:

5.3B: Matter and energy transformation: Food is required for energy and building cellular materials. Organisms in an ecosystem have different ways of obtaining food, and some organisms obtain their food directly from other organisms. [So far so, good...]
By the end of Grade 4
Content:
Almost all energy (food) and matter can be traced to the Sun.

No, it can't.

The sun is hydrogen busy fusing into helium. Maybe the committee meant "Almost all food (energy and matter) can be traced to the sun." Still not quite correct, but not blatantly wrong.

The sun is not massive enough to go supernova. It's not going to meld protons into carbon or oxygen or any number of other elements essential to life. It will make lots of helium, which is good for birthday parties, funny voices, and the Large Hadron Collider, but it's unlikely we'll ever get it, unless Earth getting eaten up by a red giant counts.

We are made of elements produced by unimaginably energetic events, exploding stars much more massive than our local sun.

Anybody in Trenton paying attention?

The photo shows the remnants of a supernova, a composite photo made using a 48" telescope,
found here at NASA's "Astronomy Photo of the Day"

Michael Heinz and Lisa Solmose have worked hard to improve things here in New Jersey.
I've met them both, and they both are bright and personable, faced with a daunting task.

Un-teaching "science"

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:23:00 GMT

I am a high school un-teacher. I spend more time un-teaching than I do teaching.

I cannot hope to get kids to think if they walk around life believing much of the nonsense they learned during their impressionable years.

The idea of teaching a room full of children who still have reason (at least economic) to trust the tooth fairy makes my eyeballs quiver. Good Lord, somebody has to do it, and I respect anyone possessing the gadolinium gonads needed to teach larval humans. If you're going to dabble in science, though, please put away the textbooks. and get it right.

Children are sent to school earlier and earlier ("please wipe your feet, hang up your coat, and dry your umbilical stump") and expected to perform more and more. A child reciting a list of organelles before he's sprouted an axillary hair is about as learned as an Irish d ancing monkey but not nearly as entertaining. My lambs come to high school spewing content without understanding, and have been rewarded for this. How can this be?*

I've complained about this long enough to get myself attached to a committee, and we're looking at science into the early grades, which means perusing the state standards. Uh-oh.

***

Language matters. I am trying to parse the state standards. The first one below applies to children before they finish second grade. We're talking about 7 years olds. A lot of them will be bored hanging around the old folks weekend. Go chat with one.

The Sun is a star that can only be seen during the day.
New Jer sey Core Curriculum Content Standards

True, I suppose, but tautological. It says nothing. A young child never asks why we can see the sun during the day. The interesting question is why can't we see the other stars.

Worry not--we'll jam some science in the young'uns:

Determine a set of general rules describing when the Sun and Moon are visible based on actual sky observations.
New Jer sey Core Curriculum Content Standards

Asking second graders to do "actual" sun observations can lead to "actual" blindness.

Part of me loves this idea. Let the kids find patterns. Let them observe periodicity in nature. Don't expect them, however, to come up with a set of general rules. Really. Go talk to one. Even one who does the Irish monkey thing well. (She's the one with the report card on the refrigerator.)

Here's one for the Pre-K crowd:

Experiments and explorations provide opportunities for young learners to use science vocabulary and scientific terms.
New Jerse y Core Curriculum Content Standards
t

No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!!

Children are magical thinkers--words have tremendous power. Telling a child that things "fall" because of gravity is catechism, not science. We have enough of that already.

Instead, focus on the word "fall"--what does it mean to fall? If a child asks why things always fall "down", work on the word down. If you have an ambitiously curious child, tell them that stuff is attracted to other stuff and no one knows why. Do not use a science vocabulary term until the child has a chance to discover what it means.

I'd rather ban the word gravity in elementary school than "provide opportunities for young learners to use science vocabulary." They got plenty of other things to grasp before throwing talismans at them.

I look forward to the committee meetings.

*Turns out our state standards are designed by "educators and experts
recognized for their content area expertise. [italics mine]" Gulp.

The Einstein acceptance speech wordle was found at Ptak Science Books here.

The cartoon is from, of course, Toothpaste For Dinner....

Your science teacher believes what?!?

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:34:00 GMT

I may be teaching your child soon--here are some of the things I believe:

General Jack D. Ripper had a point, fluoridating public water is a bad idea.

Not all vaccines mandatory for public school in NJ should be mandatory, and that using a healthy abortus for a common vaccine may be ethically dubious.

Tithonus and the rubella vaccine

Drinking from a public water fountain is safe and a good idea, and charter schools are neither.

Public water and charter schools

However, drinking water held in bottles made with an estrogen-like agent is dangerously stupid.

Sylvester McMonkey McBean and the FDA

Our Federal Secretary of Education is under-qualified.

I really don't like Arne

I have a bit of a religious streak, inconsistent as it may be.

Eating in a science class

But I have little tolerance for those who dismiss descent with modification with little (or no) thought. Evolution is the heart of biology.

Darwin in the classroom

Photos/illustrations as attributed at the original posts.

Unsustainable

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:05:00 GMT

Paddling directly into into a 20 mph breeze for 40 minutes burns a lot of calories--figure about 500, give or take 150.We gathered two dozen clams, from little necks to chowders, and probably burned another couple hundred calories.

Our clams provided us with maybe 350 calories.

Oh, we got all kinds of goodness from them, fresh clams scream with deliciousness. We got sunshine, we got salt spray, we got the good kind of sore muscles.

But we also got negative calories. This is unsustainable.

***

What does this have to do with biology?

Food is biology. It provides the stuff and energy that allow us to build a few trillion cells to become who we are. It ultimately comes from sugars built by green plants, carbon dioxide and water joined together, fueled by the fusion of our sun.

If it costs more energy to get food than the food provides, we starve to death.

OK, we get it. Besides, we got plenty of food, we don't have to rake for no clams, the supermarket got everything we need, sheesh, teach, you're weird...

The foods we get from our grocery stores require more calories to produce than the calories they store. This is easy to ignore in a culture that spends billions of dollars a year to shed calories.

We use more energy than we get back using today's industrial farming methods. Petroleum comes from ancient organisms, once food, and the energy released from it was captured from sunlight hundreds of millions of years ago.

Industrial farming feeds a lot of people, but we're living on our savings, calories stored over millennia. Artificial fertilizer takes a lot of fuel to make. Manure works, too, but it is heavy, hard to spread, and the animals are raised far away from the corn these days. The only farms my students "know" no longer exist.

***

We could fix this, of course. A good public school education could teach children where things come from, where wastes go.

We could focus our values on creation instead of consumption. We could teach a child how to grow basil, how to raise and slaughter chickens, how to make compost, all in the name of biology and good citizenship.

I know it's impossible to start a farm in a studio apartment, but it's not impossible to grow a sprig of basil in the window. Education is about possibilities.

We lie to the children and tell them they can grow up to be the President of the United States, that they can be whatever they want to be if they try hard enough, yet rob them of life's experiences as they sit under the hum of fluorescence, learning how to manipulate quadratic equations without once ever shelling a pea pod.

***

I think an hour or two of hanging around outside every day, mucking in clam beds or gardens or just plain mud, would wreck the grade point average (GPA) of some of our finest students. (I also think it would do them a ton of good.)

I think an hour or two of teaching self-sufficiency each week might also wreck the GPA of some of our students--not because of "lost" instructional time, but because a few might start questioning what they are doing in school.

Some of my brightest students never graduate because they started asking what the function of school is before they are mature enough to wrestle with the inconsistencies and paradoxes thinking adults face daily in our culture.

A major goal in my class is getting children to realize that we all know a whole lot less than we think we do, another to help them learn how to make connections, a third simply to teach them how to observe.
I live in the same town as the children I teach. I like to be around happy, autonomous people. If they want to learn how to be sensible, however, they best avoid a teacher foolish enough to kayak in a 17 knot breeze scratching for clams and buy the canned chowder instead.