Saturday 25 August 2012

Pebbles, Sand & Silt




As I mentioned in my very first post on this blog - in the youngest grade (K1)  we will start the year with explorations of plants and gardening….but with the kindergarten students who are in K2 we will begin the year studying earth materials…pebbles, rock, sand, and clay.  

Who doesn't love earth materials?  …all those wonderful things to hold, squeeze, explore and observe.  

Some of our lessons are based on a  FOSS module for Grades 1-2 called Pebbles, Sand, and Silt This Module consists of four sequential investigations, each designed to introduce concepts in earth science. The investigations provide experiences that heighten students' awareness of rocks as earth materials and natural resources. They will come to know rocks by many names and in a variety of sizes. Pebbles and sand are the same material—just different sizes.

We have modified some of the lessons from this FOSS module on pebbles, sand and silt for younger students and we have added in lots of creative arts time with explorations and creations made of clay, sand and gravel and there are some wonderful field trips to learn about and explore soil and it is just a wonderful way to start the fall with observing, describing and exploring. 

If you are person who loves rocks - loves to hold pebbles in your hand - I have a book to recommend to you - 


"This is the story of a single pebble. It is just a normal pebble, as you might pick up on holiday - on a beach in Wales, say. Its history, though, carries us into abyssal depths of time, and across the farthest reaches of space. This is a narrative of the Earth's long and dramatic history, as gleaned from a single pebble. It begins as the pebble-particles form amid unimaginable violence in distal realms of the Universe, in the Big Bang and in supernova explosions and continues amid the construction of the Solar System. Jan Zalasiewicz shows the almost incredible complexity present in such a small and apparently mundane object. Many events in the Earth's ancient past can be deciphered from a pebble: volcanic eruptions; the lives and deaths of extinct animals and plants; the alien nature of long-vanished oceans; and transformations deep underground, including the creations of fool's gold and of oil. Zalasiewicz demonstrates how geologists reach deep into the Earth's past by forensic analysis of even the tiniest amounts of mineral matter. Many stories are crammed into each and every pebble around us. It may be small, and ordinary, this pebble - but it is also an eloquent part of our Earth's extraordinary, never-ending story."

A couple of quotes may give you a sense of the story….
"With some of these minerals, one can build quite specific histories.  Zircon is unusually eloquent in this respect.  It is zirconium silicate- that is, a mineral combination of the elements zirconium, silicon and the near-ubiquitious oxygen. But, it also shelters other elements, elements that otherwise find it hard to find a mineral home……But, this fragment of history is, to some extent, a sideshow, Zircon's main contribution is to allow students of the Earth - or of a pebble - to navigate, with incomparable precision, through the fourth dimension, through the deep time of Earth history.  It does this courtesy of a transmutation, a find of natural alchemy that the medieval scholars never dreamed of - even as it was continually happening under their noses (albeit in the realm of the very small), while those ancestors of today's scientists made ever more frantic and fruitless attempts to conjure its action to make alchemical gold.  The key here is zircon's hospitality to uranium."

I have to pause to say  - I LOVE this line -  "The key here is zircon's hospitality to uranium."

And this --- " Before any great expedition, there is a gathering of the forces - of the clans, the troops, the mercenaries - from near and far, by various routes.  Once met, they will then travel en masse, their fortunes from then to be bound together for good or ill……Sediment particles of the future pebble were gathering, around the shores of Avalonia, in the Silurian Period, for a journey that would take them to a resting place,  one where they would not see the light of day for something over 400 million years."    

I can't tell you what happens next - that is only as far as I have gotten in the book so far - but don't you want to know the rest of the story? 

Sunday 19 August 2012

Building Smart Students: A Neuroscience Perspective


So, how does all this research in neuroscience translate to the actual classroom? 

"The message from social and affective neuroscience is clear: no longer can we think of learning as separate from or disrupted by emotion, and no longer can we focus only at the level of the individual student in analyzing good strategies for classroom instruction."

This quote is from a book chapter titled  “Building Smart Students: .” , by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Matthias Faeththey  in which they present suggested strategies for teachers based on neuroscience.

One contribution from the research that they provide concerning students' learning is "If they feel no connection to the knowledge they learn in school, the academic content will seem emotionally meaningless to them.   Even if they manage to regurgitate the factual information it will lay barren and without any influence on their decisions and behavior." 

Not surprisingly their first suggested strategy for teachers is -
Strategy 1: Foster Emotional Connections to the Material
" The first and possibly most important strategy that teachers can use to foster meaningful learning through emotion is to design educational experiences that encourage relevant emotional connection to the material being learned..... teachers can make room to relate the material to the life of the students and to students' interests."

One way that I do this in the lower school science classes is to connect the students with real people who are doing scientific research.  I strive to connect them to the stories of working scientists and how these people struggle to make sense of the information they gather and to develop their scientific explanations.   My hope is that students  will feel an emotional connection to those people and will envision what it would be like to do actual research.  In addition, in learning about scientists that are making substantial contributions to their communities I hope to empower students to see that science can be one way to make substantive improvements in the world around us.

How can we make those connections between students in an elementary classroom and scientists conducting research?  We can read books, watch videos and sometimes talk with researchers (in person or online).  Here are a couple of the books that I use that might be useful to other teachers- both books are written at the appropriate reading level for Grade 2 -3 students.  You can find more information about these books here.


Tornado - Tornado! A Meteorologist and Her Prediction tells the story of a weather scientist, Lynn Burse. Students read about how Burse gathers evidence that helps her predict when a tornado is coming. They learn that meteorologists take measurements, including wind speed and temperature, and use weather balloons to take measurements high above the ground. The book includes examples of weather data displayed in different ways, such as a table and a map. This book supports students in making connections between their own weather data collection in the classroom and what scientists in the field do to help society.







A Walk in the Woods - In Walk in the Woods students "accompany" a soil scientist named Asmeret as she walks through the woods. Students see the world through a soil scientist's eyes as Asmeret searches for evidence of decomposition. As Asmeret guides students through the forest, several important ideas emerge: soil is made of living and non-living things; small organisms help decompose dead plants and animals; and through decomposition, soil is made. It shows how scientists look for evidence to help answer questions about the world. Walk in the Woods provides a real-world context for the study of decomposition and soil habitats.

Perhaps even more engaging for kids are stories about the investigations of other children that were interested in things such as finding the best substances to use in making human hair gel or to answer questions about how to keep snails in a terrarium.  My students love this books and often ask me to re-read them.  



Jess Makes Hair Gel - Jess Makes Hair Gel provides an account of a boy who sets out to make his own hair gel. In the book, Jess identifies the properties of a good hair gel and then tests different ingredients to see which have these properties. While conducting tests on each ingredient, Jess realizes that he needs to expand the list of properties of good hair gel to include several more. With this realization he is able to solve problems he encounters and end up with a great hair gel. This book models the steps of the design process that students use in the unit.






Snail Investigations- Snail Investigations is a fictional account of a class who sets out to figure out what makes a good snail habitat, so they can keep snails in their classroom. This book describes the investigations these students conduct and what they learn about how snails, like other organisms, need food, water, shelter, and air to survive. The book highlights the cycle of scientific inquiry and depicts the triumphs and missteps of a group of classroom scientists. It shows how it is possible to investigate to find answers to questions. Snail Investigations models the process of conducting a scientific investigation and provides an opportunity for students to practice interpreting data.

This is  just one way to make science more emotionally relevant to students and it is only the beginning of a new way of thinking in terms of student learning and I look forward to many more ideas and possible strategies that will come from this new area of research.  As the authors of “Building Smart Students: .” say  " we aim to distill what neuroscientists have learning into a series of neuroscience-based recommendations about emotion and learning in social context that can inform teachers' practice.  These recommendations are likely to be reliable and useable because they reflect not one experiment or brain area, but a consensus on the principles of brain functioning that has accumulated from several years of neuroscience experimentation and debate."

Friday 17 August 2012

Empathy and Compassion for Better Learning


Every year at about this time --- sometime in mid-August  - just as summer is ending  -- I begin to think about some really BIG questions. How do humans learn best?  What are the best conditions for learning new ideas and challenging material?  What are the best teaching methods?

The reason that these important questions start to squeeze their way into my mind – pushing aside the otherwise important debate in our household on whether to make banana bread w/choc chips or blueberry/peach cobbler for desert tonight and my fretting about the condition of the flowers in the raised beds on the patio and the need to do some serious pruning -  is that school is about to start!

All summer, in the back of my mind,  I have been making grand plans – collecting fabulous resource books – and sketching out whole new vistas of lesson plans.  But, now that school is just about to start it is time to get serious and make some final decisions about the improvements and changes I need to make.  Every year is different and every year is a new adventure.

Fortunately, this year I have some expert resources to rely on in planning for this new year of elementary science that I am responsible for….recent advances in neuroscience that are providing some fascinating new ideas about how best to teach children.


In June - just as the flowers and tomatoes were beginning to grow on our patio and my kids were just starting their list of deserts to make during the next two months..... I had the privilege of participating in a short course for K-12 teachers called “Embodied Brain, Social Minds” taught by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, assistant professor of education at the Rossier School of Education and assistant professor of psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California.

Here is a link to some background information on her research and some recent publications. 

This is such an exciting time in neuroscience research and this workshop was filled with recent insights into how our brains work as they makes sense of the world.  Mary Helen Immordino-Yang presented a whole array of new research results.  Here is a TED talk that she gave that has some of this information..


 “ … meaningful learning always involves emotion.” 

From the advances in neuroscience research and the studies using imaging technologies to watch which parts of participants brains are active as they are feeling core emotions such as admiration and empathy we now know that we can no longer think of learning as separate from or disrupted by emotion.  Some of this neural activity is going on in surprisingly core areas of our brains that are also important for some very central and basic monitoring of our own bodies and key to our basic survival.  One aspect of the new research results that I found particularly relevant to my teaching was the new understanding of how central empathy, compassion and social functioning are to the development of learning.

If you would like to know more about all of this there is a great resource full of talks and short videos  - it is all gathered together as an online course offered by the Annenberg Foundation

Here are some thoughts from the Neuroscience and the Classroom website which relates to empathy and the social nature of learning….

How does empathy work?
Like all emotions, empathy rides on the neurological platform of the body and the "self"—that sense of a "real me" (my needs, my desires, my beliefs) that is formed from our experiences. We see ourselves in others, and we understand others by simulating their actions and circumstances on the same neurological structures that keep us alive or maintain our sense of social well-being. 


Why is empathy important to learning and teaching?
Learning in social contexts, like schools, depends on recognizing, understanding, and sharing goals. If people do not recognize that another's actions are goal directed, simulations will not be activated, and the intended learning may not occur. Learners must understand teachers' goals, and teachers will be more effective if they understand their students' goals. Of course, as we have seen, in addition to understanding goals, teachers and learners must share a sense of the emotional relevance of the goals. It's possible to understand others' actions and goals but not to care about them. To foster meaningful learning, the goals must both be understood and matter to teacher and student. Most of us have been in classrooms in which the goals seem either misunderstood or misaligned—or both.” (ref)


If you have a chance be sure to watch some of the videos – all of them are excellent – but for this discussion the videos from Unit 3: Seeing the Self in Other especially the ones titled Music and Emotion and Empathy provide some more specific examples.  

In my next post I will focus on an article from Dr. Immordino-Yang's research and give some specific examples of how that will inform my science instruction for this year - and hopefully give other teachers some ideas for their classrooms as well.   


Wednesday 8 August 2012

More Seeds - Seeds of Science




As a science specialist at the American School in London (ASL), I have varied roles within that job description.  In the lower school I am both the primary science instructor for the 180 students in Grades 3 and 4 as well as the science leader for Grades K-4.   This means that I am responsible for determining the science curriculum sequence across these grade levels for the lower school in consultation with the grade level teams, for taking the lead in K-12 science reviews and for recommending or delivering professional development in science to all teachers in the lower school.  At times I also provide mentoring during the curriculum implementation in science for classroom teachers.  Over the last five years there has been a major review and overhaul of the science instruction at the American School in London in grades K-12.  The Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading curriculum has been an absolute godsend to me in meeting the constantly changing demands of my job as science specialist.
We are currently starting our fifth year of the implementation of SEEDs at the American School in London.  As the program has grown across the grade levels there have been various changes as we adapt and modify our curriculum sequence to better fit our school.  We have been excited to be part of the newest SEEDs pilot project now being developed for Grade 6.

As a growing learning community at ASL, we have started to provide training and workshops to other international schools.  In November 2011, five teachers from ASL made presentations at two conferences  (The Mediterranean Association of International Schools and the European Council of International Schools).   In February, two teachers developed presentations to support the teachers at the International school in Valencia Spain in their pilot of SEEDS curriculum.  We hope to continue to grow and expand our capacity to serve as resource center for SEEDS in Europe.  In November 2012 several teachers and the head of the lower school will be offering a workshop at ECIS titled “Taking Children’s Reading & Writing into the Future: Using Best Practices in Literacy to Teach Science”.  We are also looking forward to the further development of the SEEDS middle school units and the increasing integration of educational technologies into the units. 
As the year progresses I will be posting information and ideas from the various science units from Kindergarden to Grade 4 - including our Seeds of Science units.   So stay tuned.



Tuesday 7 August 2012

Beginnings


Welcome to an elementary science blog -based at the American School in London
 As this is the beginning of this blog is seems appropriate to start with the foundation.  In our school that is the K1 class.   It would be called Preschool in many other American schools.  The children are just starting school and are 4-5 yrs old.  The teachers in the K1 team decided that in addition to their regular project work and science units they would like to expand our gardening unit to have a gardening focus through the whole year.   As school starts in the fall this got me thinking about how to align the garden science lessons with the natural cycles of the seasons.  Rather than start with sprouting seeds (something that would make more sense to do later in the year - to start in the winter),  I have decided to start the year with some lessons related to other forms of plant growth.  So,  we will be growing some common plants from cuttings to add more green growing life to the classrooms.  In addition, we will be harvesting some plants and investigating what is inside them.  (Spoiler Alert! - Seeds!)  So, in late July I started sprouting pumpkins and squash seeds to be planted in raised beds in our courtyard.   Hopefully, they will grow large enough for us to harvest by late October.   We will see!
Charmant Pumpkin seeding

10 days after planting