An electronic newsletter for the science education community
January/February 2006
Field Notes
Educators share how they are using Project 2061 tools
This 2061 Connections report continues a series in
which educators share—in their own words—how they are
using AAAS Project 2061 reform tools to improve science and mathematics
education.
- Gerber with Dr. Lucy Slinger, formerly in the University of Wisconsin-La
Crosse School of Education, during a teacher workshop they led together.
Enhancing Botanical Education with Project 2061 Publications
As a faculty member of the Biology Department
at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UW-L), I have worked with
in-service and pre-service K–12 teachers in my region for seven
years, with the goal of enhancing the botanical education of students.
My focus is to provide teachers with a better understanding of core
botanical concepts and to present classroom activities they can use
to better connect plants, in particular, and science, in general,
to the other subjects they may teach, whether art, literature, or
mathematics. This work is part of the Teachers
Using Living Plants (TULIP) Project, a botanical education initiative.
When I first started my preparation to give workshops, make presentations,
and co-mentor projects with these practicing and future educators—many
of whom are not biology majors—I turned to a variety of publications,
one of which was Project 2061’s Benchmarks
for Science Literacy. Benchmarks provided the
general grade-level knowledge and concepts information I needed to
address, to which I added the appropriate botanical concepts for my
workshops and in-class activities. Through this process, an elementary-level
plant curriculum was developed that has been added to the science
curriculum of the School District of Onalaska, Wisconsin. Today I
continue to work with teachers in this district to develop plant-related
science activities for use in elementary classrooms.
- Gerber (sitting) with teachers from his local Onalaska, Wisconsin,
school district during a field trip made as part of a summer workshop.
Here is one example of how I used Benchmarks and other
AAAS-produced tools to develop a 3rd grade-level, plant-related classroom
activity with Dr. Delores Heiden (UW-L Teacher Education), who wanted
to integrate non-fiction science books into her literacy class. Pre-service
teachers in Heiden’s class receive assignments with in-service
teachers in my local school district. Ms. Kim Gavin, who teaches 3rd
grade at Eagle Bluff Elementary in the Onalaska District, wanted help
in designing a food-related lesson and wished to incorporate plants
into the lesson activity.
After learning more specifics from Ms. Gavin,
I assigned two pre-service teachers from Heiden’s class to look
for more information on food preservation. In Benchmarks for
Science Literacy, we identified one agriculture benchmark for
grades 3 through 5 that was particularly relevant:
Heating, salting, smoking, drying, cooling, and airtight packaging
are ways to slow down the spoiling of food by microscopic organisms.
These methods make it possible for food to be stored for long intervals
before being used. (See Benchmarks Chapter 8: The Designed
World, agriculture
benchmarks for grades 3 through 5)
I also directed them to the AAAS Science
NetLinks Web site to check for related food preservation lessons.
Meanwhile, I checked AAAS’s Science Books & Films for
a related appropriate grade-level book and found How Do You
Raise a Raisin? by Pam Munoz Ryan on its list of "Best
Books for Children 2003."
- Gerber (center) running a “Grocery Store Botany” workshop
for K–12 teachers during an NSTA-affiliated Wisconsin Society
of Science Teachers annual meeting in
2004. Pre-service teacher Stefanie Lawniczak is helping.
Equipped with these resources, the pre-service teachers readied
a presentation for a 3rd grade classroom, which included the distribution
of raisins for snack-time. While these young students enjoyed the
raisins, they read and talked about the How Do You Raise a
Raisin? book, which had a lot of information on raisins and
how they are produced. In another activity after snack-time, the students
put grapes into a dehydrator and produced their own raisins for the
very next day, which they also ate. Both the 3rd graders and the practicing
teacher were thrilled with the activities, all of which were possible
for the cost of some raisins and grapes, and a book and dehydrator.
I am planning a new activity for the classroom this year that includes
the purchase of a grapevine so that 3rd graders can first experience
harvesting the grapes before dehydrating them. Other fruits of the
3rd graders’ choosing will be dried this year to allow them
to run some basic experiments and make comparisons about fruit drying
times, and in this way present an inquiry-based model for the pre-service
teachers to follow. This work establishes in the 3rd grade classroom
what Project 2061 founder F.
James Rutherford (1991) describes as “real science education,” while
it also involves both a practicing teacher and pre-service teachers.
For a minimal cost, we developed a science literacy lesson the children
enjoyed, introduced pre-service teachers to Benchmarks and
other user-friendly AAAS tools, and addressed some of the teacher
education preparation and interdisciplinary connection challenges
voiced by Rutherford
and George Nelson (2005) and Iris
Weiss (2005).
I have found Project 2061 publications valuable and I plan to continue
promoting their use to teachers and local school district administrators.
And as a botanist, a member of the Botanical
Society of America, an affiliate society of AAAS, and a member
of the AAAS itself, I also encourage my university colleagues to use
these excellent tools developed by Project 2061.
—D.
Timothy Gerber
Dr. Gerber is an associate professor in the Biology Department at
the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and director of the TULIP Project.
- Luan Sandberg
Improving Science Education in Quincy, Illinois
With the support of consultants Dr. Linda Brazdil
and Mary Ann Brearton, our committee of 40 teachers in kindergarten
through 12th grade worked to develop and strengthen our ability to
make sound educational decisions for the future of our science program.
As part of the three years that we worked to improve the quality of science
education in Quincy, Illinois, School District 172, we provided summer
in-service professional development that enhanced the district’s
opportunities for professional growth. A primary effort of the committee
was to sharpen the knowledge and skills essential for the evaluation
and review of our curriculum. To accomplish this goal, we learned
how to use Project 2061’s research-based tools, starting with Science
for All Americans and Benchmarks for Science Literacy.
The committee was first divided into smaller team units. Each team
consisted of five or six teachers, in a variety of grade levels, who
would read each chapter in Science for All Americans and Benchmarks
for Science Literacy to prepare for discussing the instructional
implications as well as the research-based student misconceptions.
We then took a look at our existing curriculum and aligned the units
that were currently being used with the learning goals that are recommended
in Benchmarks. One result of this analysis was our realization
that we were teaching an abstract unit on weather too early in the
primary grades. We also used the growth-of-understanding maps in Atlas
of Science Literacy, which helped us to discover that in several
cases we were re-teaching topics. As a consequence, we were not able
to advance student understanding and thus move ahead in the curriculum
as far as we could have. This increased understanding of learning
goals was constructive.
- Illinois teachers work in a team to evaluate their science curriculum
during summer professional development.
All of our learning was used to create a database that helped us
to keep track of our benchmarks, assessment frameworks, learning standards,
instructional implications, and student misconceptions, as well as
any additional helpful hints and suggestions for each unit. With this
well-thought-out information, we were now ready to look for opportunities
to strengthen and refine our science curriculum K–8. All of
our work also helped us to discover one or two topics that were being
missed completely and a few other topics that were over-taught. The
full committee was also able to recommend ways to streamline the curriculum.
Once our suggested revised curriculum received approval, we began
to examine science materials with a new emphasis placed on obtaining
materials that would support the inquiry approach to teaching science.
Once again, we used our Project 2061 documents to help us evaluate
the materials we wanted to pilot. We were continually referring back
to all of our resources.
We have been piloting our units with much success and have been
receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from both the school
administration and the public, who are praising what they believe
to be a very methodical evaluation process. All of this work for science
education only became possible because the Quincy Foundation for Quality
Education and the Quincy Public Schools jointly funded it by raising
money from grants, donations, and the public.
Reporting last January, the local newspaper, the Quincy Herald-Whig,
wrote, “The Quincy School Board’s Curriculum Committee
heard an update on a curriculum alignment process that is starting
to show improvement in the district’s science scores” (read
the full article).
This work has been energizing, and as I told the Herald, “I
can’t wait to see the growth we may make once we begin to implement
it completely.”
—Luan
Sandberg
Ms. Sandberg is a 3rd grade teacher at Washington School in Quincy, Illinois, and the science teacher leader for the district.
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