MysteryScience.com

MysteryScience.com

Teach in grades K-5? Need or want an excellent resource to help you along with the Next Generation Science Standards?  Use mysteryscience.com (Reserve a free-trial membership now!) Or if your school currently has a subscription don’t forget to use it!  You are sitting on a gem. For many of us, our old curriculum isn’t aligned or rigorous enough, so we need resources and ideas to help us along.  

Whether you have or have not been formally trained in NGSS within our district, Mystery Science is a good tool to use along the way.

For those of you who have been trained, the lessons follow the same pattern as the ones that were shown- starting with a phenomena to framing the lesson to completing an investigation!  Mystery science is a subscription service for full access, or free with limited access if you sign up and reserve a spot. Though limited, if you do the free version, what is available to you is still great content that could and should be used if it relates to one of your standards.  The lessons provide hands-on investigations that are engaging, easy prep, and aligned to NGSS and Common Core. Click on their homepage (mysteryscience.com), scroll down a bit, and watch their informative one minute video.

#StayCurious

Mystery Science: Lessons for elementary teachers

How can you use this in the classroom?

I always begin science with one of Mystery Science’s opening questions that go with the lesson.  My class completes an interactive notebook along the way. Adding “Input/Output” content that relates to the content.  We spend our science block answering questions, discussing ideas, learning key vocabulary words, writing, and completing hands-on experiments or activities.  Since I started using this website, my students participate, get involved, and share what they learn in science with others. Students get excited and are intensely engaged in what the lessons have to offer.  Each lesson provides a question that needs to be answered, “activity supplies” that we the teacher need to print/prep or gather in order to complete the investigation. They even offer assessments at the end of each unit.  If this resource is available to you or is something you are interested in, use it while you can, I guarantee your kids will enjoy it!

Tech-ing with a purpose,  

Tiffani Bossieux

They Did the Lab. Now What?

They Did the Lab. Now What?
This month we look at how to teach our scientists to construct scientific explanations, just in time for Science and Engineering Fair season! This is one of the 8 Science and Engineering Practices. The full text of this practice is “constructing explanations and designing solutions in 6-8 builds on K-5 experiences and progresses to include constructing explanations and designing solutions supported by multiple sources of evidence consistent with scientific knowledge, principles and theories”.			https://www.wevideo.com/view/999783272
How often do students fail to connect the lab with the science behind it? Constructing scientific explanations will reduce the size of this speed bump in our science classes.
	If we want to mold scientifically literate, critical thinkers, this is the key. For students to construct evidence based explanations, they must understand how to distinguish between evidence that supports their claim and evidence that does not. They have to determine validity and reliability of evidence. Are these not skills we want in our voting citizens? If we want to show how science supports all the other disciplines, again, this is the key. In order to construct their conclusions, students must use mathematical computations to analyze and interpret their data. They must understand the components of a strong explanation, including a claim, evidence, reasoning, and possibly a rebuttal. They must know how to cite sources and make connections between scientific texts and their own experiences.
Our science classes should be places where students get to apply the skills they are learning in their other classes in order to explain their world.
	There is A LOT out there on Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) writing. You have probably seen the “My Dad is an Alien” and the Sham Wow activities already. These are great places to start, but if you are ready for a more in depth look, look no further than Drs. Joseph Krajcik and Katherine McNeill. They are the creators of the framework and have published books, websites, and articles on this very skill. The site, www.argumentationtoolkit.org has several strong activities including supportive and appropriate evidence sorts, reasoning sorts, videos both for teachers and for students on the components and an incredibly helpful reasoning tool to assist student in connecting their evidence to their claims. If you want more from Drs. Joseph Krajcik and Katherine McNeill, here is a Lab Out Loud podcast all on CER writing: https://laboutloud.com/2015/04/episode-127-claim-evidence-reasoning/ Here is a journal article published by Drs. Joseph Krajcik and Katherine McNeill that I found very helpful in understanding the framework when I was beginning to include it in my science students’ lab analyses.  http://www.katherinelmcneill.com/uploads/1/6/8/7/1687518/mcneillkrajcik_nsta_inquiry_2008.pdf There are other helpful resources, such as the one linked below, that help students organize their thinking into a scientific explanation. http://georgiascienceteacher.org/Resources/Documents/eObservations/Linked%20Files/Evidence-Based%20Writing%20in%20Science.docx Lately, in our 8th grade science classes at Wiltsey, we have been building students’ understanding of inheritance of traits. We are using Wisconsin fast plants, students own life experiences and data sets of human pedigrees in order for students to collect evidence from multiple sources to support their initial claims. This is from the IQWST curriculum and is well scaffolded in the curriculum to help students build an understanding of how to complete scientific explanations, even if they have never learned this skill before. For those who are familiar with the CER framework, they can look for the most appropriate evidence and ensure their writing reflects this work. Explaining their results of labs, research, etc. is paramount to retaining scientific knowledge, but also gives students a voice to share their learning and their analysis. We can support students in building their awareness of their natural world, and in so doing, teach them to communicate and evaluate evidence based claims. Stay Curious, Sara Yeh

Teach Them to be Scientists

Teach Them To Be Scientists
The road is before you. The destination is clear.  You know what stops to make on your journey, and you know where most of the speed bumps will lie. Your challenge is keeping your vehicle tuned up. You must take care that each part of your vehicle is in good working order, otherwise the whole trip may be affected.
Each month, we will investigate one part of the vehicle that will help us reach our destination-- fostering scientific thinking. The road is science education. The stops are the Disciplinary Core Ideas. The speed bumps are time, resources, students’ prior knowledge, etc. The vehicle is the Science and Engineering Practices, and the more equipped the vehicle, the better we can navigate the road.
	I remember a time when a science fair project was just one more thing to get done. It was a grade I needed to earn, and it was a lot of work my mom was going to have to help me with. This is not how I want my students to see the science investigations we do in class or, hopefully, the ones they do outside of class. I want students to see the value in asking scientific questions and investigating their world. I want them to develop ways to answer their questions. I want to give them the skills to design investigations. I want them to be confident in their ability to be scientists.
This month we will learn how to teach students to plan and carry out investigations.
	Last month we learned about a strategy called Inquiry Boards. Click here for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RuXjrGrggY With Inquiry Boards, students brainstorm the variables, using a big question and lab materials as their starting point. They determine the variables they will investigate, and turn those into a question they can develop an experiment to answer. But is that enough to require before giving 30 kids baking soda, vinegar and beakers? Probably not. There is much more planning left to do. This brings us to this month’s tool. Last year, Dr. Harri spoke about something called Argument Driven Inquiry and it changed my classroom. (Thank you, Dr. Harri!) I would certainly recommend any science teacher puts at least one of the ADI books on their Amazon wishlist. Here is one for your viewing pleasure:  https://www.amazon.com/Argument-Driven-Inquiry-Biology-Investigations-PB349X1/dp/1938946200 Using the Laboratory Proposal tool, students learn to design the specifics of their investigations. We discuss how they will change and measure their independent variable, how they will measure their dependent variable and how they will maintain control over their control variables. We decide their procedures, discuss safety concerns specific to the lab, how they will analyze their data and create a rough draft of their data table. In order to get lab materials, each group member must have this filled out and have a neat data table copied into their notebooks. Students are then released to collect their data. And this is exactly what they do. Most groups now collect data in about 20 minutes! If you would like to see this in action, please set up a Spotlight visit! I would love to share it with you! Stay Curious, Sara Yeh

Let Them Be Scientists! by Sara Yeh

Let Them Be Scientists!
Our science classes are transitioning to places where our students have the opportunity to be the scientists. We are grabbing hold of a new way of approaching science education. Let’s do this work together!
We can learn from each other’s successes and struggles during this transition, and become better teachers in the process! My focus this year is on the Science and Engineering Practices for my students. Join me as we work to develop scientifically literate, critically thinking students.
	I wonder, if we plan instruction around the practices, using our content as a necessary tool, will our students flourish as scientists?
Let’s transition our science classes to rooms where our students are the scientists!
	How can we help our students improve their ability to be scientifically literate, critical thinkers? It starts with the Science and Engineering Practices! These are the vehicle to get us there and the DCIs are our map. We have certain stops along the way; places like “Contact Forces” and “Genetic Mutations”, but the Science and Engineering Practices are going to get us to these places. Here is the link to the CA NGSS Framework if you would like to check out your grade: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/cf/scifwprepubversion.asp One strategy that I have found particularly helpful in transitioning my students is called “Inquiry Boards”. Here’s a video showing a teacher using them to introduce experimental design to her students:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RuXjrGrggY These have really helped my kiddos understand how to design fair experiments and then how to analyze their data. In fact, our team changed our start to our year, using this strategy to introduce variables, collecting and analyzing data, adding in resources to our notebooks as we went through each step. This saved us time and materials since our introduction lab was part of our first instructional segment (unit) but allowed us to introduce these concepts and set up our notebooks. NGSS has high expectations, but completely possible if we reflect on small changes we can make in our instruction that can have big impacts on the learning in our rooms. Stay Curious, Sara Yeh