by editor | Aug 28, 2014 | Environmental Literacy
Writing Stories Builds Scientific Literacy
From Environmental Research Bulletin
Nicole Ardoin and Jason Morris, Project Leaders
THE RESEARCH: Ritchie, S. M., Tomas, L., & Tones, M. (2011). Writing stories to enhance scientific literacy. International Journal of Science Education, 33(5), 685–707.
International studies have uncovered an unfortunate trend: students are becoming less interested in science. Especially at the middle school level, students are finding it difficult to become excited about science. And, according to this study’s authors, that’s not just a problem for students’ performance on tests: “This is an important issue for science educators because disengaged students are less likely to become informed future citizens who use natural, scientific, and technological resources responsibly for a sustainable future.”
Increasingly, researchers are thinking about scientific literacy in terms of not only what students know, but also how they apply what they know. This study examined whether one technique—writing stories with embedded scientific concepts—could help students learn new concepts and also apply them in novel settings, thereby building their interest in science.
The authors point to previous research that suggests that writing tasks, including imaginative writing, can improve student learning and motivation. They considered a recent qualitative study in which fourth-grade students wrote an ecological mystery. That study found that students were engaged and interested, built scientific knowledge, and improved their literacy skills. The authors of this paper took that idea further by developing a short-story format (which they suggest is easier to implement) and devising a more rigorous research design to test the effects of the approach.
In this study, students completed writing tasks that involved the soci0scientific issue of biosecurity (namely, the threat of introduced species). The authors argue that socio-scientific issues are ideal for building applied scientific literacy because these issues blend scientific concepts and current social issues. Within the context of learning about issues such as biosecurity, students interpret data, evaluate claims, analyze and generate arguments, ad assess (and sometimes develop their own) moral viewpoints.
Conducted in Australia, the study involved two sixth-grade science classes of 28 and 27 students. One group served as a control group and received the standard curriculum on microorganisms.The other class served as a treatment group, and in addition to the standard curriculum, completed the writing task. Both groups completed an online questionnaire, the BioQuiz, that helped researchers gauge students’ knowledge, interest, confidence, and scientific literacy. The researchers also followed up with interviews
The writing task was to write short stories, which the researchers called BioStories. These stories were based on writing prompts that depicted a scenario (for example, the late Steve Irwin and a young girl discuss the need for quarantines at a customs checkpoint). A project website provided links to relevant scientific information, and instructors asked students to incorporate that information into their stories.
The researchers generated three key findings about the students who completed the writing project:
•The students became more familiar with and knowledgeable about biosecurity and related biological concepts than the students in the control group.
•The students’ interest in science improved significantly more than the students in the control group.
• The students’ scientific content scores for their writing samples improved significantly, which demonstrates an improvement in their derived sense of scientific literacy.
Interviews with the students supported these findings, with the students expressing enjoyment about learning new things, researching information, and writing their stories. In the words of one student: “It was kind of interesting writing about something I really enjoyed.”
The researchers found the results to be promising and encourage middle school teachers to use these writing techniques. But further research, particularly with larger sample sizes, could confirm the results. And more research could help clarify which is more important: the topic or the writing approach itself.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Research and practice have suggested that middle school students can be difficult to engage through traditional science curriculum. This study tested a novel approach in which students used writing prompts to create original short stories that incorporated scientific information on a relevant socio-scientific topic. The researchers concluded that this approach can help students learn scientific concepts, become more interested in science, and improve their derived sense of scientific literacy. The researchers encourage middle school science teachers to adopt the approach where appropriate.
by editor | Aug 25, 2014 | Schoolyard Classroom
Teaching Science:
Share Your Standards to Integrate Your Teaching
by Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
Let’s say you wish to incorporate an activity in the neighborhood of your school into a unit you are planning in science, and have been thinking about asking the math teacher if she would be interested in working with you. Then you learn from a friend that plants on the bank of a stream, when they are in leaf, pull water from the ground to use for photosynthesis. In fact, she tells you, they pull so much water up that the level of the stream drops visibly. This observable change in the height of the stream seems to you to be a door to math, writing, science, and perhaps even art. So, you begin thinking.
There is a creek which runs past the southeast corner of the school grounds, and you decide to use it as the site where your students will make their observations. You check it out, and find a spot where they can set a meter stick on a flat bottom rock to take their measurements. The creek is no more than twenty inches deep at its highest level on the bank, so you don’t have to be overly concerned about student safety while they take their measurements, and you decide to plan for doing the work.
Students will work in groups of four, which, for this class, means seven groups. If the creek traveled farther through the school grounds, you could have each group set up its own measuring site. Since that’s not the case, you decide to have the groups make quick depth measurements so that you can walk to the creek, take measurements within 15 minutes, and return to the classroom. As they wait their turn, each group estimates the percent leaf cover, based on what they think 100% leaf coverage would look like. You could have had the groups observe different aspects of the creek, but decided that would involve too much planning and confusion. This is your first effort outside the classroom, and you just don’t want to make it more complicated than it already is. A wise decision.
Now, you have to work out how the observations they will make tie to more than one curricular area. This is the tricky bit. You decide to have each group hang a data sheet on the classroom walls, depicting the data they have taken in ways they feel best illustrate their observations and interpretations. To enable them to do this, you and a math teacher help them learn to make data tables, how to organize these tables to make best sense of the data, learn to graph the data and how to make decisions about what to place on the x- and y-axes. As the work progresses, you and the math teacher have students review and assess their tabulation and graphing practices. Here’s a question for you: Are any of the above activities covered in the math standards?
As students move through this work, you coordinate with their language arts teacher to build in writing and reading activities which are tied to standards that teacher is working on. For instance, you want your students to describe what the project is about, how they are making their observations, what they think these will show them, and how this whole system works from the time rain falls from the clouds until it is either incorporated into carbohydrates, or enters the creek. How many disciplines’ standards describe this kind of work?
Thinking about this, you decide to ask their art teacher if there are ways they can use her curricula to communicate student work in this project. She replies that she’ll think about it, and may be able to work it into what they will do later in the year. Encouraged by this, and the willingness of the math and language arts teachers to work with you, you decide to start exploring standards to see how they play out in the work as you’ve visualized and planned it.
What follows are three broad phases of this project, and up to three standards each addresses in each discipline. I chose 6th grade because it is at the middle of the K-12 experience. Note that the standards named in each area were chosen from a myriad of possible standards. Some may involve more than one part of the project, but are mentioned only once. Here they are:
• Choosing the location for the project, discussion and decision to estimate leafout and measuring depth of the stream, the processes it will involve, and who will carry them out. Students perform a preliminary assessment of the site via sketches which will inform an annotated collage/painting produced in the final stages of the project. Together, they involve aspects of these standards:
Art – Make connections between visual arts and other disciplines. Create a work of art, selecting and applying artistic elements and technical skills to achieve desired effect.
Language Arts – Apply more than one strategy for generating ideas and planning writing. Generate ideas prior to organizing them and adjust prewriting strategies accordingly (e.g., brainstorm a list, select relevant ideas/details to include in piece of writing). Delegate parts of writing process to team members (e.g., during prewriting, one team member gathers Internet information while another uses the library periodicals).
Mathematics – Use variables to represent two quantities in a real-world problem that change in relationship to one another. Model with mathematics. Describe the nature of the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement.
Science – Explain how the boundaries of a system can be drawn to fit the purpose of the study. Generate a question that can be answered through scientific investigation. (This may involve refining or refocusing a broad and ill-defined question.) Describe the water cycle and give local examples of where parts of the water cycle can be seen.
• Students make their observations and carry out the plan for their investigation. This involves these standards:
Art – Choose and evaluate a range of subject matter, symbols and ideas. Recognize and describe how technical, organizational and aesthetic elements contribute to the ideas, emotions and overall impact communicated by works of art. Describe how elements of art are used to create balance, unity, emphasis, illusion of space and rhythm-movement.
Language Arts – Maintain a journal or an electronic log to collect and explore ideas; record observations, dialogue, and/or description for later use as a basis for informational or literary writing. Understand and apply new vocabulary. Use multiple resources regularly to identify needed changes (e.g., writing guide, adult, peer, criteria and/or checklist, thesaurus).
Mathematics – Graph ordered pairs of rational numbers and determine the coordinates of a point in the coordinate plane. Represent a problem situation, describe the process used to solve the problem, and verify the reasonableness of the solution. Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100 (e.g., 30% of a quantity means 30/100 times the quantity).
Science – Plan and conduct a scientific investigation (e.g., field study, systematic observation, controlled experiment, model, or simulation) that is appropriate for the question being asked. Work collaboratively with other students to carry out the investigations. Predict what may happen to an ecosystem if nonliving factors change (e.g., the amount of light, range of temperatures, or availability of water or habitat), or if one or more populations are removed from or added to the ecosystem.
• Students are conducting the analysis and synthesis of their data, and constructing, critiquing, and presenting their reports. This work involves these standards:
Art – Respond to works of art, giving reasons for preferences.
Language Arts – Use a variety of prewriting strategies (e.g., story mapping, listing, webbing, jotting, outlining, free writing, brainstorming). Produce multiple drafts. Publish in a format that is appropriate for specific audiences and purposes.
Mathematics – Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Analyze the relationship between the dependent and independent variables using graphs and tables. Determine whether or not a relationship is proportional and explain your reasoning.
Science –Summarize the results from a scientific investigation and use the results to respond to the question or hypothesis being tested. Organize and display relevant data, construct an evidence-based explanation of the results of an investigation and communicate the conclusions. Recognize and interpret patterns – as well as variations from previously learned or observed patterns – in data, diagrams, symbols, and words.
To me, the project, outside and inside the classroom, appears to act as a vortex, drawing several disciplines into it; integrating them in the process. The effect of this activity in the students’ brains must be related to their involvement and investment in the work, and empowerment as persons that teachers and others report when they describe student work in the world about. In most cases, this outcome is also associated with success in passing the annual tests students take to measure their accomplishment of state and national standards.
It takes courage for a teacher in today’s schools to attempt something like this. What we need are teachers and environmental educators who have done this kind of work to mentor those who haven’t, but would like to. A good place to start that would be at annual state science teacher conferences, and at state and regional environmental educator conferences. I know from my own personal experience teaching and working with teachers that a little help goes a long way. If you’re interested in the idea, leave a comment. Or, better yet, write an article and post it here. Or (where did I find this thought?) be a conference presenter.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
by editor | Aug 1, 2014 | Critical Thinking, Learning Theory
Teaching Science:
Ripples in the Pond: Building Deeper Conceptual Understandings in Science
by Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
Flat, circular and smooth, the rock spat at the clean surface of the water, twisted slightly on its axis, and flew again. Dark and light, concentric lines speed outwards from its landing place. The rock’s path becomes a low curving arc until it touches the water again then flies toward its next destination. Flight paths shrinking, it finally stutters, rocks ever so briefly on the surface, then, laying on its side, sinks from sight.
We’ve all skipped rocks on the water. It’s fun and challenging. How far can we make one skip? How many times will it touch the water? We practice, search for flat rocks, try different methods, watch others then copy them, and practice some more. This is like teaching “the book.” Getting to Chapter 37 by the end of the year can be a real challenge in skipping rocks. We become creative in our own planning and preparation, go to workshops, attend seminars and institutes, pore through publishers’ offerings, observe what others are doing, and, by the time we retire, can skip through all 37 blindfolded. Students need to do science, then marshal relevant content to understand the results of their science. Just as scientists do.
But have we taught science? Science is a way of knowing, and beginning to understand the universe we live in. Do brief encounters with science content teach students to apply critical thinking to scientific or science related issues? I think not. For one thing, each encounter is so brief that it leaves no time for reflection or comprehension of scientific method or the concepts and processes enlightened by this method. No time for the reflection and contemplation so necessary to conceptual understanding. In too many classrooms, students are not provided the time to experience science as a process that lets us know. After completing a chapter, students may utter words which we ourselves have used, and make these words follow upon one another in apparently meaningful ways, but they may not comprehend the concepts that the words describe at all. These next words are important; think about them. “Science studies the world directly; it does not learn about the world from a text or canned activity. Our students must use the observational and critical thinking skills which science and our brain provides to understand and express their world.” When we do less, we do them, and ourselves, a great disservice.
When we touch on 37 chapters (representing 37 content areas with more or less complex concepts) we are like a rock, touching the water 37 times before it loses energy and sinks. Encounters with content or water are necessarily brief, leave a series of thin ripples, but do not make meaningful connections among the 37 visits except in the linear direction they travel. Even the ripples, once they touch, have lost most of their energy, and make no lasting impression upon their world. Nevertheless, we barge along, convincing ourselves, and our students, that they understand, that they have been taught science. However, if we take the time to check to see if we’ve done it right, we may find that even our best students entertain misconceptions.
One day during a cell biology lecture, I caught my mind stopping, then asking me a question, “Do they all see the same picture in their minds?” I couldn’t answer, and that floored me. What if none of them saw the same picture I did? So, I asked them to take a couple of minutes, draw a cell and a mitochondrion, and no more than two sentences about what we (I) had been talking about. As they worked, I scoped and zoomed, walking casually, but eyes and ears working to the max. (That’s an important part of teaching, if you want to know if and when students are learning.)
Their drawings fell into two basic categories: the mitochondrion was either inside or outside the cell. If it was inside, there was a small chance it was inside the nucleus. Otherwise, it could be anywhere inside the cell. If outside, it either touched the cell, or was some distance from it. I gathered from this that 1) I needed to start the lecture by drawing a mitochondrion inside a cell, and 2) I ought to find a way to probe for the pictures in their heads when I taught about what they couldn’t see. So, they immediately started drawing what they were learning. That helped me to know where I needed to take care to avoid misconceptions. A simple scope and zoom would clarify most misconceptions.
You can learn to tell when your students are learning. It just takes practice and careful attention to how each student telegraphs learning. Can you ensure that they are learning for understanding? If they are, then most misconceptions take care of themselves as students negotiate meaning. Small, ongoing probes help you do this. They become a habit. Another way you can enhance understandings and reduce misconceptions is to use the science your students are doing now to extend these learnings into a new topic. If the new topic is closely related, the transition should be obvious. If it seems distantly related, you have to search for your own understandings to find an appropriate vehicle to manage the transition. Usually, you can find it embedded in what the class has recently been learning.
Let’s say you are completing a unit on DNA and the function of operons in producing protein. Next you plan an abrupt change to study plant taxa. Two apparently disparate topics, and generally viewed as such. This happens so often that our students think of the topics as having no connection to one another. Why not initiate the transition by referring to interactions between operon and environment? If you’re starting the unit on plant taxa with the idea of using this new knowledge to work with an environmental educator to do a stream bank restoration project, you might have students use the idea of DNA and operons to think of reasons that the plant taxa you will be working with are different from one another in appearance and habitat preference. And might account for why they will be planted at different places in the riparian. Or not planted there at all. So, instead of leaving one topic and leaping to another, they will use what they know to navigate toward a new topic along a course they’ve sailed before. The rocks no longer leap from place to place then skitter to a stop.
There are innumerable transitions you can envision. Each one contains the capacity to produce comprehensive understandings, larger and larger conceptual schemata. Learning for understanding. When you begin to search for these transitions, your own understandings become stronger, as does your confidence to teach for understanding. This reverses my methaphor: The rock represents the trajectory of transitions, and the ripples your growing connected web of understandings. (I’m much more comfortable with this version.) What if your students were finishing a unit on weather, and next, were going to prepare to study the macroinvertebrate organisms which inhabit streams? How many transitions can you imagine up? How can you use one of them to enlarge the compass of your students’ current conceptual schemata?
When we simply jump from one topic to another, the rock touching and flying, what does this say about how well we comprehend the subdisciplines we teach and their connections? Should we do something about this? A good place to start is where you are. You’ve got your class engaged in a topic, and soon you’ll move to another. Visualize the connection you’ll use to transition to this new topic. Where, in the new content, do you want the transition to lead? How will you initiate the transition? Now, when it is time, start the transition. We need to learn how to take the time to develop quality transitions from one topic to another. Once in that new topic, take the time to nail down the understandings contained in this connection; both for the old topic, and for this new one. Then, the course the rock navigates will carry it home to deep conceptual understanding.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
by editor | Jul 24, 2014 | Environmental Literacy, Learning Theory
Cultivating Ecological Teachers and Learners Using Project Learning Tree
by Jaclyn Stallard
from The Branch, Project Learning Tree’s E-newsletter Summer 2014
“Ecological teaching and learning is not just a matter of pedagogy, but also philosophy. Ecological teaching and learning represents a new life-affirming mindset that all teachers—and, to a larger extent, all citizens and all Earth’s human inhabitants—must adopt for a sustainable future. This philosophy embraces interconnectedness and systems thinking, challenging the Western notion of separateness. This type of teaching and learning develops and fosters an individual and collective ecological consciousness as humans move through life and relate to themselves, others, and the world around them.”
Read the full article here
by editor | Jul 17, 2014 | STEM
2014 E3 Green Apple Award Winners
Using Links as Labs: First Green Connects Kids, Classrooms and Golf Courses
Glenwood Golf Course Superintendent Steve Kealy helps students measure water flow of a stream running through the course as part of the First Green Environmental Education Program.
As the United States seeks to meet the rising need for graduates with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) degrees, First Green is filling the gap with its innovative program of using golf courses as learning labs. First Green coordinates outdoor STEM “learning labs” at golf courses that allow students to perform hands-on experiments and tests, all within the focus of their schools’ environmental science and/or environmental horticulture curricula. In these outdoor “labs” students test water quality, collect soil samples, identify plants, do math activities and work with local issues such as stream-bed or owl-nest restoration.
Superintendent Steve Kealy helps student find macroinvertebrates in leaf litter from the golf course.
Many of the field trips involve community organizations. In Bellevue, Wash., the city’s Stream Team often has a learning station at Glendale Country Club’s field trips and engages students in identifying macro-invertebrates (bugs) from the Glendale pond. In addition, a Puget Sound area group, Nature Vision, provides a salmon life cycle lab.
A 501(c)(3) tax-exempt foundation, First Green was founded in 1997 and is based in Bellevue, Wash. Over 15,000 students have been on First Green field trips. Each field trip reaches an estimated 230 people with environmental and golf messages (due to students sharing with friends and families and teachers sharing with colleagues. First Green has replicated the program across Washington and into other states – Oregon, California, New Jersey, New York, Utah, Colorado, and just launched a program in Western Canada in May 2014.
Support
First Green receives ongoing support from the Washington State Golf Association, Pacific Northwest Golf Association, golf clubs and individual donors.
In addition, First Green was awarded STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) grants of $155,750 and $100,000 by the United States Golf Association (USGA) for 2014 and 2013. The grants are funded by the USGA’s partnership with Chevron, designed to encourage students in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines (STEM) through the world of golf.
Awards
First Green was awarded a 2014 E3 Washington Green Apple Award for Business Excellence. Steve Kealy, Golf Course Superintendent and First Green Board member, accepted the award at a ceremony on June 26, 2014.
For More Information
For more information about First Green, visit www.thefirstgreen.org or call 425/746-0809. The media contacts are Cathy Relyea, email cathyrelyea@thefirstgreen.org or call 425/373-9915; and Jeff Shelley, email jeffs@cybergolf.com or call 206/522-6981.
