Learning Activities

Students individually respond to this checklist and articulate how they decided whether or not science is going on in each scenario (similar to Page Keeley's "Justified List" strategy). Students then share and compare ideas in small groups. Items on the list are intentionally ambiguous in order to spark discussion-- the justification students provide is the important thing (and is often a tacit notion). It's a great first day of class ice-breaker and formative assessment in one!

I created this way back in Fall 1999 when I taught my very first elementary science methods course. I didn't expect that my students would check EVERYTHING as science (some because they were trying to guess how they thought I wanted them to answer). I have used it every term since! I use it as a pre-reading exercise for "How do you know science is going on?" by Karen Sullenger in Science & Children. We compare things on the list to what they experienced K12, and what they see in their practicum schools, and contrast some of the experiences on the list with model lessons that I teach in class.

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Keywords: nature of science

Students watch a video about reasons science is important prior to class. In class, they select three of these reasons that they think are the most important and three they think are the least important to teach science. They mark these publicly and explain their thinking. Students read each other’s justifications and have a discussion. Many students end with the enduring impression that science is important to teach children for many reasons.

I use this activity on the second day of class. It helps establish a classroom culture where students listen to, agree with, and disagree with each other. I think they’re more comfortable doing that in this context because it relies on their personal experiences rather than their science knowledge. I tend to get things started and let the conversation roll, with minimal input from me. Students often mention this activity in course evaluations as a powerful learning experience that helped solidify for them why science was important to teach. I feel it is important to emphasize that science is important to teach because science is very often minimized in the elementary curriculum. 

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Keywords: nature of science

Students participate in role play activities to build familiarity with, and explore ways of using, the talk tools presented in a chapter they read before class. Students are given two scenarios and each take a turn being the teacher while the others are role playing the children. There are also activities to role play IRE and poker face. After each activity there is an opportunity to debrief as a whole group.

This activity is used in the middle of the semester after a lesson about attending to students’ ideas. I like that this encourages students to use these talk tools, at least once. I believe this helps them to be more comfortable with these talk tools than they would be from just reading about them. They are also able to see others implement these talk tools, which helps broaden their ideas of what they include. Finally, this has the benefit of allowing them to experience some of the challenges accompanying this new instructional strategy.

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Keywords: pedagogy/instructional strategies