What Is Earth Science?

As the beginning of the new school year draws near, it's time to ponder those first few days of earth science class again. During the first week of class I focus on having students thinking about what science is and planning how we will engage in the process of science during the school year.

Image credit: Morgue File

The first day's research question is simple: What is Earth Science? The task for this research question involves creating a What Is Earth Science? collage according to the following guidelines:

• One collage per small group of 3 or 4 students
• Each person contributes at least 5 images to the collage (cut from old magazines, like National Geographic)
• All images must have a connecting theme, related to Earth science (pictures of the atmosphere, for example)
• Each collage needs a descriptive title and a well-written caption explaining the collage
• Thorough clean-up and recycling before we leave class

This task accomplishes a number of important goals in a subtle, low-intensity fashion:

• students get familiar with collaborating in small groups, having discussions and asking each other questions
• students and I can socialize and get to know each other while collages are being assembled
• students learn some expectations about descriptive writing and peer editing
• students learn expectations about cleaning up the lab space
• I gain information about student understanding of earth science and uncover quite a few interesting misconceptions (many students confuse life sciences and social sciences with earth science, for example)

Each group has an opportunity to share their collage with the class and explain their theme. I save the collages and bring them out at the end of the school year.

I enjoy this activity because it allows students to engage in the process of science immediately, but in a rather informal, low stress manner. Putting together the collages sets us up for a deeper discussion of the process of science, which I will address in my next post: Understanding Science.

Science Education Frameworks

A big day for science literacy today as the National Research Council's Framework for K-12 Science Education was released for public consumption. A hefty 283-page document, the framework outlines a grand vision for contemporary science education and "represents the first step in a process to create new standards in K-12 science education."

The framework is organized around three main dimensions of science education:

• Scientific and engineering practices;
• Crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science and engineering through their common application across fields; and
• Core ideas in four disciplinary areas: physical sciences; life sciences; earth and space sciences; and engineering, technology, and the applications of science.

While I've only just begun to absorb this massive text, I am really impressed by its scope, thoughtfulness, and organization. I hope the framework will become a primary source document for states and school districts as they create/revise their own science standards.

In browsing the earth science section of the document, the authors referenced a few sources that I think are worthy of further study as well:

• Earth Science Literacy Principles
• Ocean Literacy Principles
• Atmospheric Science Literacy Principles
• Climate Literacy Principles

To me, these documents represent some of the finest efforts to define what science literacy means. Our collective challenge is to create pathways for teachers and students to realize the grand vision of authentic, meaningful science education that has been put forth in these documents.

I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues to weave this new framework into our science education system. You can explore the framework yourself using the widget below:

Science Help Guides

I've created a number of Science Help Guides for students to assist in establishing common language and expectations around data tables, graphing, writing captions, experimental design, and math calculations. In addition to reinforcing common language, these help guides promote the independent use of resources in my students. And rather than using rubrics for these basic science tasks, my help guides set the standard of excellence (more on this in a future post) for each process: "This is what an excellent graph looks like," "This is what an excellent data table looks like," etc.

For example, here is a basic outline of my Data Table Help Guide:

General rules for excellent data tables:

• One data table equals one graph
• Data tables have a descriptive title (who/what/when/where)
• Data tables have a heading row, and each heading has a descriptive label with appropriate scientific units
• Data in the table are written as numbers only (scientific units are placed in the headings)
• The first column in the table is X-axis data, remaining columns are Y-axis data (Y1, Y2, Y3, etc.)

At the beginning of the school year, each student gets a set of these help guides to place in the front of their science binders. I also publish them on my classroom website for easy access.

Many students have commented how useful and helpful these guides are, and quite a few save their copy to take with them to high school (a high honor indeed!).

My Personal Learning Network

It's funny, but for the longest time I didn't realize that my own personal curiosity and self-directed learning were really signs of my own Personal Learning Network (PLN). My PLN is centered around a variety of technology tools that keep me connected and up-to-date on a wide range of science and education topics.

Image credit: Morgue File

My favorite tools for accessing (and sharing) my PLN include:

• Twitter
• Google Reader
• Flipboard and Zite apps (both free) on my iPad

I follow and subscribe to these great people, organizations, and resources:

• NASA Earth Observatory
• NASA Climate Change
• NOAA Climate Watch
• Penn State Climate Ethics
• Understanding Science
• sciencegeekgirl
• Free Technology for Teachers
• Information Is Beautiful
• Connected Principals
• The Innovative Educator
• For the Love of Learning
• Teach Paperless
• Dangerously Irrelevant

Give them a try—let me know if you like them or recommend others. There are many more, but these should keep you busy for awhile…

Welcome

Welcome to Questioning Science. As a 12+ year middle level science teacher, I decided that I wanted to share my questions, thoughts, and experiences with a wider audience. I make no claims to be an expert, but I do have insight and experience that I think would be beneficial to other educators.

Thanks in advance for following along with me. I welcome your respectful, constructive comments as this journey unfolds…

For now, posts here will fall mainly under the following broad categories:

• science education questions
• science education resources
• classroom techniques and ideas
• miscellaneous musings