Feb28

Science Across Disciplines

The Science Teacher cover
In a presentation I attended last year, Dr. Rita Colwell, the former director of the National Science Foundation, described 21st century science as "international and interdisciplinary." Interdisciplinary is one of those words that is hard to define, but we "know it when we see it." The article Thinking, Teaching, and Learning Science Outside the Boxes does provide a definition as well as a discussion of its importance and even a "taxonomy" of levels of disciplinarity (yes, I know that's not a real word!), showing that it's not an either/or dichotomy. It would be interesting to compare our unit plans with this taxonomy.

Other articles in this issue illustrate activities at these levels: studying biofuels and nanotechnology, building rubber-band cars, integrating science and the arts, and collecting and analyzing hydrology data. These are very powerful kinds of investigations, not simply contrived or superficial collections of activities. Scan your back issues of NSTA publications for more excellent examples. If you need some web resources to get similar units started, check out the Scilinks categories Alternate Energy Sources, Nanotechnology, and Leonardo da Vinci.

I'm sure that most of us have tried some level of interdisciplinary studies. But there are some real challenges (especially at the secondary level). Trying to find common planning time with other teachers is difficult. (Wouldn't it be a great use of professional development days to actually research a topic and plan some units as an interdisciplinary team?) The students in a science class might report to 2-3 different teachers in math or other subjects. But my favorite is teachers who say "We already so this." I know that this is certainly true in many cases, but I wonder if having students draw a picture, calculate an average, or write a report represents the highest levels of true interdisciplinary instruction (I'll have to check the taxonomy.)

I had the opportunity last week to visit several high schools. Although it was for a different project, I kept my eyes open for ideas for interdisciplinary activities. For example, I saw an opportunity for connecting an American history unit on 19th century industrialization and inventions with science units on electricity, machines, and energy. In another class, a student asked "So how does all of this fit together?" I suspect that when we do interdisciplinary studies, we as teachers see the connections and we assume that the students will, too. But we need to show the students how things are connected and model how to make the connections.

It also occurred to me that elective courses are where many students start to see the connections and applications -- robotics, graphic arts, technical writing, computer applications, marketing/advertising, culinary arts, etc. And yet often these courses do not "count" much for the GPA or honor roll and are the first to go when there are budget cuts. Hmmm.

Having read this issue, I realize now that when my colleagues and I did our "interdisciplinary" field trip every spring, what we really had was a collection of parallel activities. What we needed to do was identify a theme, a problem, or an essential question to connect the activities. We could still do the same activities, but the theme or question would would focus the students' attention better and help them see the connections.

Please feel free to share any themes or questions that you have used to plan interdisciplinary learning.

Published: Feb-28-09 | 0 Comments | 364 Links to this post

Feb23

Classification

Science Scope cover In last month's issue of Science and Children, Bill Robertson asks the question "Why do we classify things in science?" He notes that many teachers teach classification as an end in itself or as a communications exercise. He suggests that "Classification in the classroom should lead toward the understanding of concepts, or at least should be done with an eye toward the ultimate purpose, such as the classification of rocks leading toward an understanding of the formation of geologic features" (page 70).

I visited an elementary class in which the teacher had a collection of small objects, which the students were to categorize. The students had lively discussions as they sorted the objects into the compartments of a cafeteria tray. But the teacher went beyond this simple activity - she had the teams exchange trays and try to figure out what characteristics the other team used to create the groups. Then she gave them some new objects and asked where (and if) the objects fit and whether the groups should be changed or expanded to accommodate the new objects. Two of the articles in this Science Scope also take classification one step further, with follow-ups to scavenger hunts using GPS units and digital cameras!

There are many terrific websites that help students understand the concepts of biological classification, such as those in the Explore Classification section of SciLinks. But let's not forget that other sciences also use classifications such as the the Periodic Table, simple machines, galaxies, and hurricanes.

Regardless of the subject, instructing students in the process of identifying similarities and differences (through the processes of comparing and classifying) has been found to improve student achievement. In Classroom Instruction That Works. Robert Marzano and his colleagues cite this research and describe two types of classification activities: 1) giving students the categories and asking them to classify items and 2) giving students the items and asking them to sort them into categories of their own creation. The authors note that using graphic organizers can help students to determine the patterns. And science is full of graphic representations of classifications schemes (just think of what can be learned from looking at the Periodic Table). History of Life: Looking at the Pattern depicts the current thinking about how living things are classified based on patterns and observations.

How many of us learned that Pluto was classified as a planet and that there are three kingdoms of living things? It's exciting to see how new information causes us to rethink what we thought we knew.
Published: Feb-23-09 | 0 Comments | 195 Links to this post

Feb16

Plants and Their Partners

Science & Children cover I recently received the first seed catalog in the mail. For those of us in the northern states, seeing the pictures of flowering plants is a harbinger of spring! In the same delivery was this issue of S&C, themed around plants. A coincidence?

Growing bean seeds is a standard activity in elementary science and a great way to learn about parts of a plant. This is also an effective medium for designing and implementing controlled experiments, and the authors of the articles in this issue have many suggestions for differentiating this activity so that the students aren't doing the same thing each year.

In addition to the web resources at the end of each article, NSTA's SciLinks database has dozens of websites related to plants. Enter plant as a keyword to get lists of websites related to plant growth, tropisms, plants as food, structure of seed plants, and parts of a plant.

Some of my favorites include Celebrating Wildflowers from the National Park Service, The Great Plant Escape from the University of Illinois (a Spanish version is available), and the Biology of Plants from the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The Teachers' Domain website has several lesson plans related to plants. Living Life as a Plant and How Do Plants Get Energy are designed for the upper elementary grades. Exploring Plants and Plant Life Cycles are appropriate for the primary grades. All of these lessons incorporate multimedia and graphics as resources.

Horticulture: Just for Kids from Texas A&M University has suggestions for planting a school garden. If you're not sure what to plant, the Montgomery County (MD) Department of Environmental Protection has suggestions for what to include in a Colonial Herb Garden (featuring plants found in colonial days) and a Shakespeare Herb Garden (plants mentioned in his plays). These lists may be of interest to your colleagues at the secondary level. I've also heard of schools planting "pizza gardens" with tomatoes, peppers, onions, basil, and oregano.

For more information on school and community gardens, check the KidsGardening website. Feel free to add your own suggestions as a comment here. Think Spring!
Published: Feb-16-09 | 5 Comments | 45 Links to this post

Feb10

Darwin's Week

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth (February 12), the Science Section of the New York Times (February 10, 2009) has several fascinating articles. Even if you don’t teach biology, they’re worth reading! Here are links and the descriptions from the Times:
  • Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential. It is a testament to Darwin’s extraordinary insight that it took almost a century for biologists to understand the essential correctness of his views.
  • Seeing the Risks of Humanity’s Hand in Species Evolution. Human predation is causing target species to evolve to reproduce at younger ages and smaller sizes, to their short-term benefit but to the long-term harm of the species.
  • Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live. Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution.
  • Crunching the Data for the Tree of Life. Biologists know how species are related but lack the tools to show off their discoveries.
  • Genes Offer New Clues in Old Debate on Species’ Origins. The study of how species originate, a process known as speciation, is not only one of evolution’s most active areas of study, but also one of its most contentious.
  • Findings: Darwin the Comedian. Now That’s Entertainment! Richard Milner, a science historian, finds the funny side of Charles Darwin, evolutionary giant.
  • How many of us have actually read Darwin’s original works? This feature, On Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. includes selections by prominent scientists of their favorite passages and discussions of why these passages are important.
  • The video Darwin in Song features Richard Milner, a singing Darwinian scholar.


    • Check your PBS listings this week for NOVA’s Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial The January 2009 edition of Scientific American (which you can read online) has an Evolution theme.

    NSTA has published the Tool Kit for Teaching Evolution by Judy Elgin Jensen. It has background information and related resources, lesson plans, and teaching suggestions. A downloadable version is free to NSTA members. And don’t forget to look for related websites in SciLinks. Enter evolution as a keyword for many categories of sites.
    Published: Feb-10-09 | 0 Comments | 331 Links to this post