Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists

Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists
Author: Maria C. Grant
Publisher: Solution Tree Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2013-12-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1936765403

It is essential that students learn to examine, review, and evaluate knowledge and ideas through a process of scientific investigation and argumentation. Using these instructional methods and lesson scenarios, teachers of all disciplines will gain the tools needed to offer students a richer, lasting understanding of science, its concepts, and its place in their lives and the global community.

Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists

Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists
Author: Maria C. Grant
Publisher: Solution Tree
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-06-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781760011239

Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists: Strategies Aligned With Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards prepares students to examine their decisions and ideas through scientific investigation and argumentation and promotes an understanding of the impact of science in their daily lives. Numerous, detailed lesson scenarios support K 6 teachers in integrating English language arts and science content. These instructional examples illustrate how to purposely engage students in reading, writing, and communicating about science and align the Common Core State Standards for English language arts/literacy (CCSS ELA / literacy) with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Focusing on the three dimensions of the NGSS (1) scientific and engineering practices, (2) crosscutting concepts, and (3) disciplinary core ideas the authors share research-supported strategies that make science learning enjoyable and attainable for all students. With this resource, even teachers who do not view themselves as teachers of science will gain the tools they need to offer students a rich and lasting understanding of science, its concepts, and its place in their lives and the global community.

Teaching Science Thinking

Teaching Science Thinking
Author: Christopher Moore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1315298619

Teach your students how to think like scientists. This book shows you practical ways to incorporate science thinking in your classroom using simple "Thinking Tasks" that you can insert into any lesson. What is science thinking and how can you possibly teach and assess it? How is science thinking incorporated into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and how can it be weaved into your curriculum? This book answers these questions. This practical book provides a clear, research-verified framework for helping students develop scientific thinking as required by the NGSS. Your students will not be memorizing content but will become engaged in the real work scientists do, using critical thinking patterns such as: Recognizing patterns, Inventing new hypotheses based on observations, Separating causes from correlations, Determining relevant variables and isolating them, Testing hypotheses, and Thinking about their own thinking and the relative value of evidence. The book includes a variety of sample classroom activities and rubrics, as well as frameworks for creating your own tools. Designed for the busy teacher, this book also shows you quick and simple ways to add deep science thinking to existing lessons.

Ambitious Science Teaching

Ambitious Science Teaching
Author: Mark Windschitl
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2020-08-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1682531643

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.

The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching

The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching
Author: Terry McGlynn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2020-11-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022654253X

Higher education is a strange beast. Teaching is a critical skill for scientists in academia, yet one that is barely touched upon in their professional training—despite being a substantial part of their career. This book is a practical guide for anyone teaching STEM-related academic disciplines at the college level, from graduate students teaching lab sections and newly appointed faculty to well-seasoned professors in want of fresh ideas. Terry McGlynn’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach avoids off-putting pedagogical jargon and enables instructors to become true ambassadors for science. For years, McGlynn has been addressing the need for practical and accessible advice for college science teachers through his popular blog Small Pond Science. Now he has gathered this advice as an easy read—one that can be ingested and put to use on short deadline. Readers will learn about topics ranging from creating a syllabus and developing grading rubrics to mastering online teaching and ensuring safety during lab and fieldwork. The book also offers advice on cultivating productive relationships with students, teaching assistants, and colleagues.

How Students Learn

How Students Learn
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 633
Release: 2005-01-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309074339

How do you get a fourth-grader excited about history? How do you even begin to persuade high school students that mathematical functions are relevant to their everyday lives? In this volume, practical questions that confront every classroom teacher are addressed using the latest exciting research on cognition, teaching, and learning. How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom builds on the discoveries detailed in the bestselling How People Learn. Now, these findings are presented in a way that teachers can use immediately, to revitalize their work in the classroom for even greater effectiveness. Organized for utility, the book explores how the principles of learning can be applied in teaching history, science, and math topics at three levels: elementary, middle, and high school. Leading educators explain in detail how they developed successful curricula and teaching approaches, presenting strategies that serve as models for curriculum development and classroom instruction. Their recounting of personal teaching experiences lends strength and warmth to this volume. The book explores the importance of balancing students' knowledge of historical fact against their understanding of concepts, such as change and cause, and their skills in assessing historical accounts. It discusses how to build straightforward science experiments into true understanding of scientific principles. And it shows how to overcome the difficulties in teaching math to generate real insight and reasoning in math students. It also features illustrated suggestions for classroom activities. How Students Learn offers a highly useful blend of principle and practice. It will be important not only to teachers, administrators, curriculum designers, and teacher educators, but also to parents and the larger community concerned about children's education.

Inquiry-based Science Education

Inquiry-based Science Education
Author: Robyn M. Gillies
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000036316

Students often think of science as disconnected pieces of information rather than a narrative that challenges their thinking, requires them to develop evidence-based explanations for the phenomena under investigation, and communicate their ideas in discipline-specific language as to why certain solutions to a problem work. The author provides teachers in primary and junior secondary school with different evidence-based strategies they can use to teach inquiry science in their classrooms. The research and theoretical perspectives that underpin the strategies are discussed as are examples of how different ones areimplemented in science classrooms to affect student engagement and learning. Key Features: Presents processes involved in teaching inquiry-based science Discusses importance of multi-modal representations in teaching inquiry based-science Covers ways to develop scientifically literacy Uses the Structure of Observed learning Outcomes (SOLO) Taxonomy to assess student reasoning, problem-solving and learning Presents ways to promote scientific discourse, including teacher-student interactions, student-student interactions, and meta-cognitive thinking

Science Teaching Reconsidered

Science Teaching Reconsidered
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 102
Release: 1997-03-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309175445

Effective science teaching requires creativity, imagination, and innovation. In light of concerns about American science literacy, scientists and educators have struggled to teach this discipline more effectively. Science Teaching Reconsidered provides undergraduate science educators with a path to understanding students, accommodating their individual differences, and helping them grasp the methodsâ€"and the wonderâ€"of science. What impact does teaching style have? How do I plan a course curriculum? How do I make lectures, classes, and laboratories more effective? How can I tell what students are thinking? Why don't they understand? This handbook provides productive approaches to these and other questions. Written by scientists who are also educators, the handbook offers suggestions for having a greater impact in the classroom and provides resources for further research.

Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards

Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2000-05-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309064767

Humans, especially children, are naturally curious. Yet, people often balk at the thought of learning scienceâ€"the "eyes glazed over" syndrome. Teachers may find teaching science a major challenge in an era when science ranges from the hardly imaginable quark to the distant, blazing quasar. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards is the book that educators have been waiting forâ€"a practical guide to teaching inquiry and teaching through inquiry, as recommended by the National Science Education Standards. This will be an important resource for educators who must help school boards, parents, and teachers understand "why we can't teach the way we used to." "Inquiry" refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and in which students grasp science knowledge and the methods by which that knowledge is produced. This book explains and illustrates how inquiry helps students learn science content, master how to do science, and understand the nature of science. This book explores the dimensions of teaching and learning science as inquiry for K-12 students across a range of science topics. Detailed examples help clarify when teachers should use the inquiry-based approach and how much structure, guidance, and coaching they should provide. The book dispels myths that may have discouraged educators from the inquiry-based approach and illuminates the subtle interplay between concepts, processes, and science as it is experienced in the classroom. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards shows how to bring the standards to life, with features such as classroom vignettes exploring different kinds of inquiries for elementary, middle, and high school and Frequently Asked Questions for teachers, responding to common concerns such as obtaining teaching supplies. Turning to assessment, the committee discusses why assessment is important, looks at existing schemes and formats, and addresses how to involve students in assessing their own learning achievements. In addition, this book discusses administrative assistance, communication with parents, appropriate teacher evaluation, and other avenues to promoting and supporting this new teaching paradigm.

Teach Now! Science

Teach Now! Science
Author: Tom Sherrington
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2014-05-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317664906

Being taught by a great teacher is one of the great privileges of life. Teach Now! is an exciting new series that opens up the secrets of great teachers and, step-by-step, helps trainees to build the skills and confidence they need to become first-rate classroom practitioners. Written by a highly-skilled practitioner, this practical, classroom-focused guide contains all the support you need to become a great science teacher. Combining a grounded, modern rationale for learning and teaching with highly practical training approaches, the book guides you through all the different aspects of science teaching offering clear, straightforward advice on classroom practice, lesson planning and working in schools. Teaching and learning, planning, assessment and behaviour management are all covered in detail, with a host of carefully chosen examples used to demonstrate good practice. There are also chapters on organising practical work, the science curriculum, key ideas that underpin science as a subject and finding the right job. Throughout the book, there is a wide selection of ready-to-use activities, strategies and techniques to help you bring science alive in all three main disciplines, including common experiments and demonstrations from biology, physics and chemistry to engage and inspire you and your students. Celebrating the whole process of engaging young people with the awe and wonder of science, this book is your essential guide as you start your exciting and rewarding career as an outstanding science teacher.