Minds on Science Gazette

Volume 8

Problems and Extensions

Strategies Fostering Thinking

 

• Present a demonstration, teaching tool, simple lab activity, creative homework assignment, or some strategy or technique related to one of the following areas of science teaching: Earth science, life science, physical science, or science-technology-society.

• Create an EEEP (Exciting Example, Everyday Phenomena) for at least one concept from the fields of science identified in the previous problem and extension. Remember that an EEEP should help make the unfamiliar familiar. Prepare your EEEP and present it to the class, or video tape your EEEP describing how you would use the EEEP in a science lesson. Present the video to the class.

• Prepare a microteaching lesson that focuses on one of the following teaching strategies and present it to your peers or a small group of secondary students. Video tape the lesson, review it, and write a brief report outlining the success you had in presenting the teaching strategy, and how you might change the lesson for a future presentation. Select from these teaching strategies:

• Using advance organizers
• Elements of a stimulating classroom environment
• Questioning
• Using examples
• Closure
• Creating a positive learning environment

• Select a chapter from a secondary science textbook and analyze the questions posed in the chapter. You can use the system presented in the chapter (low inquiry vs. high inquiry), or some other system that you prefer. What is the ratio of low to high inquiry questions? To what extent is high level thinking encouraged in the chapter?

• View video tapes of science teaching and analyze the lessons in terms of the teachers' use of questions. Use the coding system shown below.

• Using the process outlined in the chapter on the use of structured controversies, prepare the necessary teaching materials to conduct a structured controversy either in your method's course, or in a secondary science classroom. Evaluate the results of the strategy by administering a student feedback form. You might use the form on page 000.

• Choose either the K-W-L or the Survey-Read-Map-Check reading strategies, and design a series of lesson plans to help students comprehend the ideas in a chapter from a secondary science textbook or one of the chapters in this book. Have your plans checked by a peer in your class. Test out your secondary science plans by field testing the lessons with your peers or a group of secondary students; if you choose this book, try them out on your peers and then send the results to me!

• Choose a partner in your class. Select a chapter from a secondary science textbook and draw a semantic map of the chapter. You and your partner should do this separately at first. Share maps with each other, and then create a cooperative semantic map. How do the individual and cooperative maps compare?

• Review the hm Science Study Skills Program materials. What language skills are developed, and what overall strategy do the authors use to help students develop language skills for the science classroom?

• Select one of the writing strategies presented in the chapter as the basis of a science lesson. Plan the lesson, then present it to a group of peers or students. How effective was the lesson in enhancing the student's writing skills?

• Prepare a lesson on the processes of science from either the behaviorist or constructivist approach. Write a short rationale, objectives, procedures and evaluation for your lesson. Meet with peers in your class and compare your lesson plans, paying particular attention to the rationale and objectives. How are they different?

• Draw a map of a classroom showing how you would set it up to include a computer center. How would you enable students to gain access to the computer, when you have twenty-eight students in each of your five classes?