Rethinking Labs

In this week's Learning Module I viewed a video featuring a science teacher who approached lab activities in a different way. The initial part of the activity that the teacher was using could be very beneficial in my classroom. instead of having the students read from a WRITTEN procedure and completing the steps, the teacher reviewed the steps AURALLY before the students began. The students were then responsible for writing their own procedure. This is the particular part that I was interested in. Having the students compose their own procedure has many benefits. Apart from the traditional lab procedure, this requires the student to put the procedure in their own words. In this process the student will have to understand what is happening in the investigation prior to composing a procedure. They will also be making use of many relevant vocabulary terms that may be slightly unfamiliar to them. This almost forces them to become accustomed to the unfamiliar words while teaching what they mean and how to use them. Following the development of a procedure the students in the video were free to come up with any question about the investigation that concerned them. A hypothesis was then created to further investigate the question. Having the students write down and manipulate the questions that they had could prove to be a very valuable vocabulary practice tool, as well as an engaging practice. In the future, I plan to amend my labs to reflect this sort of strategy.

Visual Literacy

My students find themselves dealing with visual literacy on a daily basis in my classroom. In science, I have found that students respond better to visual representations of content more positively than simple regurgitation of material. They may experience this through concept/thinking maps, demonstrations, video clips, and even simple drawn illustrations of scientific concepts.
The most recent strategy that I have added to my teachers toolbox is Thinking Maps. As a school-wide effort we have implemented using these graphic organizers across all curriculum. Initially the students are introduced to approximately 6-7 mapping formats. Each format has a simple purpose, whether it be sequencing events, part-to-whole relationships, or describing. We can usually apply one or two of these maps to concepts we are teaching each week, and after a few weeks the students can decide on which map is appropriate for what topic.
I highly reccomend these maps in any classroom. Not only are they a quick assesmsnt to student learning, but they also reveal a higher level of thinking on the part of the student. You can also integrate artistic freedom and the use of technology in the mix to make the task more enjoyable.

Questioning???

I think the topic of "Questioning" in our reading class has helped me the most as a teacher to help my students with effective reading. I always seem to ask myself how I can make my students more involved and aware of their reading process, which has now lead me to encourage questioning. I used the strategy of highlighting in my advanced chemistry class this week. With so many in depth articles and readings that accompany such a class, my students often feel frustrated because its like reading o foreign language. The highlighting technique really seemed to help them to become aware of where they get tripped up during reading.
Many of the students are also realizing their strengths and weaknesses in their reading process. For example, one student made the comment that she has realized that she has a weak vocabulary in science. I encouraged her to not get frustrated and just to consult her group members, me, or even use her context clues to figure out the word's meaning.
In doing these types of activities, I have come to the conclusion that MANY of my students struggle with reading. And so few of us teachers have helped them to understand how to read in our content areas.

Trying Something New

I'm really excited to be trying new reading strategies in my science classrooms. I have learned that demonstrations are a great way to integrate background information into new units of study. I do a lot of demonstrations in my Physical Science and Advanced Chemistry classes, but I have decided to do most of them at the beginning of a unit of study, whereas, I used to do them after I had given the students notes and practice. This new method has proven to be very effective. Throughout various units, the students often refer back to previous demos and what happened or what they can apply after they saw the demonstration. If a student is having difficulty with a certain topic, I can almost always bring them back to understanding by reminding them of a demonstration we had done at the start of the unit.

Another benefit of science demonstrations that I had never considered was the benefit of becoming familiar with complex science vocabulary during the demonstration. Students seem to connect with unfamiliar words more easily when they "see" or "experience" the word first hand. And following the demonstration, I often require the students to do vocabulary exercises to reinforce what they experienced. Overall, I'm having some great results. Thanks IAL!

Vocabulary Module

As a science teacher, I introduce new vocabulary to my students daily. This can be a great undertaking considering the vastly different backgrounds of the students I teach. Much of a student's understanding of new terms depends on their background knowledge and the "size" of their vocabulary. And I believe the root of the problem lies within the fact that most students have never been taught HOW to learn new vocabulary. After reading the vocabulary module, I have decided to apply a few new vocabulary teaching strategies to my classroom.
Many students are turned-off by repetitious, out of reach definitions found in the textbook, which is often way above their reading level in the first place. I thought I was allowing my students more opportunity for creativity by adding a personally constructed sentence to their textbook definition, but I was wrong. Instead, I plan to require what I have done previously, which is a definition put in their own words, as well as, as sentence using the word, synonym, root word, or derivative of the term, and a picture describing or explaining the word in a vocabulary journal.
Following the above practice I plan to make the normally required "Word Wall" and interactive part of the classroom. In order to introduced terms before each unit, which will ease the anxiety of reading new information, I will allow students to pair-share their vocabulary journals. Then each student will place a word or term on the word wall after explaining their interpretation of the word to the class.
Also, as a fan of strange and unheard of words, I am going to introduce a quirky or interesting science specific word at least weekly in each class. We will use this activity to "dissect" words finding the root, prefix, suffix, and Greek or Latin derivative to strengthen the ability of each student to independently learn vocabulary in the science classroom.

For last week's Learning Module, I viewed a podcast on adolescent literacy. I was pleased to learn of one school's efforts to help their students reading in the content areas. As a teacher, I see my students struggling everyday with reading and even understanding how to process their information in the textbook. The school formulated a professional learning program that allowed the teachers take charge of teaching the students reading in the content areas.
I realize now, upon reflection, that schools do, in fact, stop teaching reading to students in the elementary grades. This is very disturbing. When students matriculate to higher grades, the requirements for reading and comprehension change drastically. Children are initially faced with phonics, pronunciation, and basic comprehension in elementary school, and then when they arrive to the middle grades they are required to understand the layout and advanced content within textbooks without any assistance in how to approach this vastly different type of literature.
In the podcast from last week's Learning Module, the teachers of this school were empowered to teach their students within each lesson how to approach reading. Many teachers believe this task should be left to the language arts teachers, but I disagree. Language arts teachers are experts in their content area just as are science or math teachers. We should not expect them to teach our students how to read science or math textbooks or publications. the reading in the content areas should be left to those who are experts in that area.