Jul08

Summer Reading

Science Teacher cover As I head off to the beach next week, along with a few mystery novels, I'm going to pack some of the books I ordered at the NSTA conference last spring, a few back issues of NSTA journals I want to review, and several of the resources listed in Current Research: Summer Reading Suggestions in this issue. It will be a full bag, but armed with my highlighter and sticky notes, I'm looking forward to catching up on my reading!

The connection between reading and science is a professional interest of mine, so I was especially interested in the article Reading Aloud: A Springboard to Inquiry. The author makes a compelling case for the value of reading trade books aloud in the classroom, especially if the class has many struggling readers. She provides a list of suggested titles of content-rich books that are written for students through grade 9 (or age 15). She also has suggestions for how (and when) to use the read-aloud strategy.

I was visiting a high school science class where, rather than using a "round robin" style of oral reading by students, the teacher read aloud sections of the textbook. The class had many struggling readers in it, and the advantage was that the students heard the text read fluently as they followed along. The teacher modeled what a good reader would do - stop and reflect, make connections to the graphics on the page, note the text clues, and highlight or add questions to the margin. When I asked the students what they thought, one said "It’s like a live podcast." The teacher did not read aloud the entire chapter, just those sections with essential concepts or that were vocabulary-dense. For more information on think-alouds and other content reading strategies, check out the SciLinks Reading and Writing in Science websites.

Some research suggests that the quality of a mentoring program can affect teacher retention. The article Helping New Science Teachers has practical suggestions for mentoring teachers, beyond helping them with paperwork and school routines. These suggestions are directly related to science instruction. This article would also be helpful to new teachers whose mentor is not another science teacher (NSTA's MsMentor is ready to assist with questions and there is a forum for new teachers on the NSTA Community site. New high school teachers could also benefit from reading Science Scope, the NSTA journal for middle school, especially if they are teaching students whose experiences in science have been minimal. And more ideas can be found in SciLinks' New Teacher Resources list of websites.

Published: Jul-08-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Jun30

Staying Up-to-Date on Professional Issues

I subscribe to many blogs and other RSS feeds to try to stay up-to-date. In a previous post, I noted how RSS feeds from organizations such as NASA, Scientific American, and the National Science Foundation provide summaries of current issues and interesting topics in science.

There are many other resources that can give us up-to-date information on issues related to teaching and learning. I particularly like the Inside School Research blog from Education Week. It includes brief summaries of current research with a link to the full report or study. Recent topics include independent-study schools, teacher mobility, the value of frequent quizzes, cell phones in the classroom, and value-added measures.

I also like the ASCD (Association for Curriculum and Supervision) Inservice blog. Recent topics include Tracking "Makes You Feel Like You're Not Smart", Hypotheses: They're Not Just for Science Anymore, Practice, Practice, Practice (Or: Homework, Homework, Homework?), Middle School Math and the Achievement Gap with links to reports or book chapters with more details.

I've also started to follow some interesting "tweets" on Twitter. Yes, I know that people post trivial and mundane information (I'm eating lunch. I'm at the beach.), but I've found some interesting folks to follow (e.g., NSTA's Lab Out Loud guys) as well as organizations such as NSTA, ASCD, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that provide leads on interesting information. And I've started to tweet with some of my own "finds."

Of course, you don't have time to read everything, but when you can get summaries or abstracts to skim, you can pick and choose what is relevant.

Please share any of your favorites!
Published: Jun-30-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Apr30

Online Professional Learning

For a project I'm working on, I wanted to revisit what I know about cooperative learning. When I Googled the topic, among the many resources I found was one from a professional development series Concept to Classroom, produced by Thirteen Ed Online (WNET, the New York PBS affiliate). The "courses" in the series are free and self-paced. They each consist of four sections -- explanation, demonstration, exploration, and implementation.

The explanation section is in the form of FAQs about the research and rationale related to the topic. The demonstration section has videos of real teachers using the concept in their own classrooms, as well as lesson plans that incorporate the topic. The exploration section guides you through thinking about what the topic would look like in your own classroom, and the implementation section assists you in developing and using a lesson. Even if you decide not to take the whole course, the list of resources (including online articles and websites) is worth a look.

Some topics that would be of interest to science teachers include inquiry-based learning, cooperative and collaborative learning, constructivism, interdisciplinary learning, and assessment. These pedagogical concepts would supplement the content-oriented Science Objects professional development resources from NSTA (which are also online and free).

Although Thirteen Ed Online does not award credit, there is a "Get Credit" toolkit with a syllabus to share with your administrators about the content of the course and a rubric to determine how your participation could be evaluated for district-sponsored PD hours. (Actually, I'd look at the materials to get an overview of the course.)

I'd like to hear about your experiences with other online PD courses that are free and relevant to science teachers!
Published: Apr-30-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post