Science Safety

Image credit: Morgue File

One of the unique aspects of the science classroom is safety. A good science teacher prioritizes and actively models safe behavior for her or his students at all times. To do otherwise is negligent.

Before every lab activity, students and I spend time reviewing the safety considerations and expectations, no matter how minor or seemingly trivial. Behind the scenes, I am checking, maintaining, and calibrating science equipment before and after labs, conducting annual chemical inventories and chemical storage reviews, and keeping up-to-date on science safety news and information. The last thing I want in my classroom is an accident caused by unsafe behavior; therefore, safety is always our #1 priority.  

Flinn Scientific is a great resource for science classroom safety, as well as being a wonderful source for science materials and equipment. They offer a wide range of free science safety resources including training videos, printable MSDS documents, chemical storage guidelines, safety contracts, and more. Whether you are a brand new or veteran science teacher, the safety resources from Flinn are worthy of your time.

For years now, we have been using Flinn's Science Safety Contract in our school. Offered in both English and Spanish, this contract is comprehensive, logical, and easy-to-understand for middle schoolers. All students and parents must sign this contract before being permitted to participate in any science lab activities.

In addition to getting familiar with the safety contract, I have students create a safety diagram of the science classroom. This activity gives students the chance to locate every safety feature in and near the science classroom, thus giving them ownership for our collective safety. We brainstorm and discuss the purpose and operation of each safety feature, and demonstrate a few of the items along the way. To be considered excellent, students' safety diagrams must be clearly labelled, be simple enough for any child in our K-8 school to use, and include standard diagram elements such as a descriptive title, a masterpiece caption, a key, a compass rose, and appropriate colors to distinguish items.

My commitment to science safety is captured quite pointedly on a poster I have in my classroom. In stark black and white, the poster shows the silhouette of a young woman using a blind walking cane. The caption reads, "Carol never wore her safety goggles. Now she doesn't need them." The message to students is crystal clear…

Connect the Dots

One of the challenges facing educators is helping students connect the dots among disparate pieces of the learning puzzle in order to see the "big picture." Our goal is to help students transfer understanding from topic-to-topic, lesson-to-lesson, concept-to-concept, domain-to-domain, in order to better appreciate how everything works together. The struggle is valiant and the rewards are great.

I particularly enjoy helping my science students connect the dots between different disciplines, such as science and math. Inevitably, I get the question, "Why do we have to do math in science?" I convey to my students that there are underlying, powerful, natural connections between different learning disciplines such as math and science, and proceed to illuminate those connections. I believe it is incumbent upon educators to assure students that we don't just make this stuff up or create rules out of thin air—that the interdisciplinary connections are real and have a noble purpose.

Pink and Green Polka Dot Background by annnie

An example of these connections can be found within the concepts of independent and dependent variables, which can be quite abstract, dreadfully boring, and quickly forgotten if just memorized. So how do we help these concepts better stick (transfer) in the student mind? Play connect-the-dots!

I've done this in my science classroom as follows: I frame all experiments and all discussions of research questions, data tables, and graphs entirely in terms of independent and dependent variables; constantly reinforce; and never waver...

• Write research questions in the form of, "How does _____ affect _____ ?" where "How does (the independent variable) affect (the dependent variable)?" becomes our standard template.
• Construct data tables where x (the independent variable) is the first column of data and y (the dependent variable) is the second column of data. (Subsequent columns of data are y1, y2, y3, etc.)
• Create graphs where the x-axis shows the independent variable and the y-axis shows the dependent variable.
• Constantly ask students, "Which variable depends on the other?" because "y depends on x." Purposely create false (and silly) combinations to help students make the distinction: "Does the height of the mountains depend on the air temperature? Wouldn't that look funny to see the mountains go up and down as the temperature changed?"

Using the same structure of common language (and clever examples) across grade levels and between disciplines such as math and science helps students create deep, transferable connections of understanding.

If you are interested in a printable copy of Connect the Dots for your classroom, visit here.

Collaboration -- A Hero's Journey

This year, our school district launches Collaboration Time for Teachers, a weekly opportunity for teachers to have additional time during the school day to work together and have professional conversations. Our district and schools spent much time last year hammering out the fine points of what this collaboration time would entail, mainly defining "the vision" and "the details." During many a meeting in which "the details" necessarily took priority, 'the vision" became buried and forgotten. I felt that it was vitally important that "the vision" not be lost.

The Hero's Journey

Asked by my principal to reflect on "the vision" of collaboration and share my thoughts with our staff, I gladly accepted the opportunity to re-clarify this vision. Here is a summary of my thoughts:

Our school was founded 12 years ago with another unique vision, that of a group of heroes embarking on a journey of discovery—a metaphorical quest to transform learning. As a guide, we used the book The Hero's Journey by J. Brown and C. Moffett to illuminate our path. The hero's journey follows a cyclical, spiral path of growth involving search, companionship, chaos, complexity, discovery, persistence, initiations, and finally insight and transformation before the journey begins anew. Two principles of a heroic school (excerpted from the book) that mesh well with our vision of collaboration are as follows:

• "True learning comes from a fusion of head, heart, and body."
• "Learning occurs in heroic environments in which motivation is largely intrinsic rather than extrinsic."

With those details in mind, I framed our nascent collaboration efforts to my colleagues as:

COLLABORATION = Teachers as Scholars who are Courageously Committed to a Hero's Journey

In a profession that has been coming under increasing external attack from all sides, I think it is important for teachers to give themselves permission to be heroes and to engage as scholars. I think it is imperative that teachers find and leverage their own intrinsic heroism to elevate the teaching profession. I think it is critical that teachers honor, value, practice, and model lifelong learning in an effort to transform education.

As we had various discussions last year about teacher collaboration time, I captured and saved notes that spoke to our vision. I did not want this vision to get lost and forgotten among the myriad details. Distilling these notes led to the following beautiful and inspiring word cloud about our collaborative vision:

Buried among all the noisy details, our original vision of collaboration re-emerged: Collaboration is a time and opportunity for teachers to engage in scholarly conversations around curriculum, planning, interventions, and equity.

I look forward to beginning a fresh hero's journey during our collaboration time this year.

Student Supply Center

Image credit: Morgue File

Back to school time has arrived and I will be setting up my classroom this week. One of the most important and useful parts of my classroom is the student supply center. This is a small area in my room where students can help themselves to minor supplies without needing to ask me. I created this supply area well over ten years ago because I simply got tired of being asked a thousand times a day for paper, scissors, pencils, etc. Now all of these things are front and center for students to borrow when they need them and without asking.

My supply center has the following self-serve items:

• small plastic boxes of: colored pencils, leftover pencils and pens, scissors, glue, rulers
• lost and found box (which always seems to fill up too quickly)
• calendar
• absent box with handouts for students who were absent and "If You Were Absent" guidelines
• bathroom occupancy flip sign (occupied/vacant) with "Bathroom" guidelines
• dictionary/thesaurus
• scrap/recycle paper
• table of contents showing our list of assignments
• box of tissues
• three-hole-punch

Small efficiencies like these can reap huge benefits—minimizing wasted time and stress in our very busy classrooms as well as placing additional responsibility in the hands of students to be independent problem solvers.

Understanding Science

A few years back, each teacher at my school was asked to create an artistic puzzle piece that visually reflected her or his values and beliefs. The dozens of linked puzzle pieces are still on display in our school lobby and make an impressive statement about our staff. Number one on my puzzle piece is "scientific literacy and integrity."

With all of the attacks on the scientific community from various "denier" groups, I worry about the state of scientific literacy in the United States. I fear that too many people are scientifically illiterate and that their illiteracy is being leveraged against them. I want my students to be scientifically literate so that they can make intelligent, informed choices in their lives and not be misled by faulty evidence or illogic.

Understanding Science is an excellent, comprehensive resource for learning about and promoting scientific literacy. Produced by the UC Museum of Paleontology at the University of California at Berkeley, Its mission "is to provide a fun, accessible, and free resource that accurately communicates what science is and how it really works." With a variety of tools, resources, and lessons that span the K through 16 classroom, Understanding Science showcases the process of science.

I'd like to highlight two of my favorite resources from Understanding Science:

How Science Works flowchart from Understanding Science

1. The How Science Works flowchart is an interactive, graphical representation of the process of science and scientific inquiry. I provide a copy of this flowchart to each of my students and use it to frame all of our discussions and activities. Students begin to understand more deeply that science does not happen in a vacuum, that it follows a logical, iterative process, and that it is an ongoing and ever-changing endeavor.
2. Asteroids and Dinosaurs is a lesson that nicely illustrates "how science works." Tracing the story of Luis and Walter Alvarez, Asteroids and Dinosaurs tell the incredible tale of the work involved in developing the link between asteroid impact and dinosaur extinction. It makes for a great beginning-of-year lesson on the nature of science that can be referenced time and again throughout the school year. 

As a scientist and a science teacher, I feel it is imperative that we teach students how to be scientifically literate. While I don't expect all of my students to become scientists, I want them to enter the "real world" empowered with the critical thinking skills that are valued in science—many of which I see lacking in today's adults.

A favorite quote of mine from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson sums it up well: "If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you."