Follow the Science to School: Evidence-based Practices for Elementary Education


Book Description

“Follow the science.” How often have you picked up an education book to read how, according to the authors, the system is broken, failing, and flailing—but their ideas for fixing it will bring about a miraculous transformation? That’s not the approach of this volume. Sure, the editors believe that our system of education could achieve significantly better results. But they also recognize that schools have gotten better over time. One explanation is the progress schools have made in “following the science”. Especially in early reading and math instruction, scholars know more now about what works than we did in the past, and more schools are putting that knowledge into practice. Now, in the wake of a horrific pandemic, even the best elementary schools are struggling to help their students get their momentum back again. In this book, the editors share high-quality syntheses of evidence and insights from leading educators, academics, and other experts. And they communicate those findings in user-friendly language, with an understanding of the real-world complexities of schools and classrooms.




Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School


Book Description

Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School offers in-depth information about the fundamental features of project-based science and strategies for implementing the approach. In project-based science classrooms students investigate, use technology, develop artifacts, collaborate, and make products to show what they have learned. Paralleling what scientists do, project-based science represents the essence of inquiry and the nature of science. Because project-based science is a method aligned with what is known about how to help all children learn science, it not only helps students learn science more thoroughly and deeply, it also helps them experience the joy of doing science. Project-based science embodies the principles in A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards. Blending principles of learning and motivation with practical teaching ideas, this text shows how project-based learning is related to ideas in the Framework and provides concrete strategies for meeting its goals. Features include long-term, interdisciplinary, student-centered lessons; scenarios; learning activities, and "Connecting to Framework for K–12 Science Education" textboxes. More concise than previous editions, the Fourth Edition offers a wealth of supplementary material on a new Companion Website, including many videos showing a teacher and class in a project environment.




Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School


Book Description

Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School integrates principles of learning and motivation with practical teaching ideas for implementing them. Paralleling what scientists do, project-based learning (PBL) represents the essence of inquiry and the nature of science, and engages children and teachers in investigating meaningful, real-world questions about the world around them. This text provides concrete strategies on teaching using a project-based approach and on meeting the principles in A Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Features include strategies for planning long-term, interdisciplinary, student-centered units; scenarios to help readers situate new experiences; and a wealth of supplementary material on the Companion Website. Features in the Fifth Edition: Integrates research-based findings from the National Research Council’s Taking Science to School, A Framework for K–12 Science Education, and NGSS to engage learners and help them make sense of phenomena in using disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts Gives attention to cultural diversity throughout the chapters, with an added focus on working with English Language Learners Describes how to develop and use assessments that require students to make use of their knowledge to solve problems or explain phenomena Illustrates how to use PBL to make connections to Common Core Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts Provides examples of project-based lessons and projects to illustrate how teachers can support children in engaging in scientific and engineering practices, such as asking questions, designing investigations, constructing models and developing evidence-based explanation




Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School


Book Description

The need for a scientifically literate population that can apply scientific ideas to solve real world problems in the 21st century has never been greater. Yet a growing disconnect exists between this need and the educational capacity to prepare them. The mission of Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School: A Project-Based Approach, 3e is to help answer this need. Like its predecessors, this new edition is organized around the guiding principles of problem-based learning: long-term, interdisciplinary, student-centered lessons that are relevant to real-world issues and activities. This teaching approach engages all young learners--regardless of culture, race, or gender--in exploring important and meaningful questions through a process of investigation and collaboration. Throughout this dynamic process, students ask questions, make predictions, design investigations, collect and analyze data, make products, and share ideas. Changes in this new edition include the following... Stronger, more explicit connections between PBS, inquiry teaching and the National Science Education Standards (NSES). The theme of establishing the relevance of science to students' lives has been expanded. It now includes attention to discrepant events, anchoring events, and experiencing phenomena in addition to its previous focus on driving questions. To help children understand that science is about explaining phenomena, a new chapter, Making Sense of Data, now follows the one on Designing and Carrying Out Investigations. It contains a section on helping children create evidence-based scientific explanations. A new section on the challenges of special needs and gifted students. The discussion of technology in science teaching have been expanded to include such new devices as wireless handhelds, cameras, cell phones, wikis and ipods. The introductory scenarios have been reworked to insure greater relevance to elementary science teaching. An accompanying Web site will offer test items and strategies to support students in problem-solving and in planning and carrying-out investigations. This text is appropriate for anyone interested in teaching elementary or middle school science using an inquiry-oriented, problem-based framework.




Elementary Science Methods


Book Description

As teachers and parents, we often hear that children are the best scientists. Great science teachers tune in to children’s interests and observations to create engaging and effective lessons. This focus on the innate curiosity of children, or humans overall is celebrated and used to justify and support efforts around STEM teaching and learning. Yet, when we discuss elementary school teachers, we often hear many inside and outside the classroom report that these teachers dislike, fear, and feel uncomfortable with science. This is exactly the opposite approach from what is universally recommended by science education scholars. This practical textbook meets the immediate, contextual needs of future and current elementary teachers by using an assets-based approach to science teaching, showing how to create inquiry-based lessons, differentiate instruction and lesson design based on children’s developmental ages and needs, and providing easy-to-use tools to advocate for scientific teaching and learning guided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).




The Science of Learning and Development


Book Description

This essential text unpacks major transformations in the study of learning and human development and provides evidence for how science can inform innovation in the design of settings, policies, practice, and research to enhance the life path, opportunity and prosperity of every child. The ideas presented provide researchers and educators with a rationale for focusing on the specific pathways and developmental patterns that may lead a specific child, with a specific family, school, and community, to prosper in school and in life. Expanding key published articles and expert commentary, the book explores a profound evolution in thinking that integrates findings from psychology with biology through sociology, education, law, and history with an emphasis on institutionalized inequities and disparate outcomes and how to address them. It points toward possible solutions through an understanding of and addressing the dynamic relations between a child and the contexts within which he or she lives, offering all researchers of human development and education a new way to understand and promote healthy development and learning for diverse, specific youth regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or history of adversity, challenge, or trauma. The book brings together scholars and practitioners from the biological/medical sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, educational science, and fields of law and social and educational policy. It provides an invaluable and unique resource for understanding the bases and status of the new science, and presents a roadmap for progress that will frame progress for at least the next decade and perhaps beyond.




Science for All Children


Book Description

Remember the first time you planted a seed and watched it sprout? Or explored how a magnet attracted a nail? If these questions bring back memories of joy and wonder, then you understand the idea behind inquiry-based scienceâ€"an approach to science education that challenges children to ask questions, solve problems, and develop scientific skills as well as gain knowledge. Inquiry-based science is based on research and experience, both of which confirm that children learn science best when they engage in hands-on science activities rather than read from a textbook. The recent National Science Education Standards prepared by the National Research Council call for a revolution in science education. They stress that the science taught must be based on active inquiry and that science should become a core activity in every grade, starting in kindergarten. This easy-to-read and practical book shows how to bring about the changes recommended in the standards. It provides guidelines for planning and implementing an inquiry-based science program in any school district. The book is divided into three parts. "Building a Foundation for Change," presents a rationale for inquiry-based science and describes how teaching through inquiry supports the way children naturally learn. It concludes with basic guidelines for planning a program. School administrators, teachers, and parents will be especially interested in the second part, "The Nuts and Bolts of Change." This section describes the five building blocks of an elementary science program: Community and administrative support. A developmentally appropriate curriculum. Opportunities for professional development. Materials support. Appropriate assessment tools. Together, these five elements provide a working model of how to implement hands-on science. The third part, "Inquiry-Centered Science in Practice," presents profiles of the successful inquiry-based science programs in districts nationwide. These profiles show how the principles of hands-on science can be adapted to different school settings. If you want to improve the way science is taught in the elementary schools in your community, Science for All Children is an indispensable resource.




Taking Science to School


Book Description

What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as: When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects? What role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science? How can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity? What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning? How can teachers be taught to teach science? The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of scienceâ€"about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science educationâ€"teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.




State of the Art


Book Description

A comprehensive reform of the science curriculum and the methods of teaching and assessing science instruction is underway. This booklet shares ideas drawn from research and promising practices in science education. These ideas are addressed specifically to educators, but are important to anybody concerned with science education in elementary, middle, and junior high schools. Each of the following topics is presented on a single page: (1) Science is for all students; (2) Setting science standards provides a valuable resource for improved instruction; (3) Students learn by "constructing" knowledge; (4) Hands-on, inquiry-based instruction is well established as an effective teaching strategy; (5) Exploration, dialogue, and discourse promote understanding; (6) Instruction should focus on the essential key concepts or ideas of science in the overfull science curriculum and on teaching them more effectively; (7) The teacher's role is changing to facilitate student learning, while the student becomes a more active learner; (8) Appropriate staff development brings lasting improvements in science teaching; (9) Assessment must be more closely aligned with the goals of science instruction; and (10) Families and other concerned adults play important roles in promoting science education. (Contains 22 references.) (PR)




Science for All Children


Book Description

Remember the first time you planted a seed and watched it sprout? Or explored how a magnet attracted a nail? If these questions bring back memories of joy and wonder, then you understand the idea behind inquiry-based science--an approach to science education that challenges children to ask questions, solve problems, and develop scientific skills as well as gain knowledge. Inquiry-based science is based on research and experience, both of which confirm that children learn science best when they engage in hands-on science activities rather than read from a textbook. The recent National Science Education Standards prepared by the National Research Council call for a revolution in science education. They stress that the science taught must be based on active inquiry and that science should become a core activity in every grade, starting in kindergarten. This easy-to-read and practical book shows how to bring about the changes recommended in the standards. It provides guidelines for planning and implementing an inquiry-based science program in any school district. The book is divided into three parts. "Building a Foundation for Change," presents a rationale for inquiry-based science and describes how teaching through inquiry supports the way children naturally learn. It concludes with basic guidelines for planning a program. School administrators, teachers, and parents will be especially interested in the second part, "The Nuts and Bolts of Change." This section describes the five building blocks of an elementary science program: Community and administrative support. A developmentally appropriate curriculum. Opportunities for professional development. Materials support. Appropriate assessment tools. Together, these five elements provide a working model of how to implement hands-on science. The third part, "Inquiry-Centered Science in Practice," presents profiles of the successful inquiry-based science programs in districts nationwide. These profiles show how the principles of hands-on science can be adapted to different school settings. If you want to improve the way science is taught in the elementary schools in your community, Science for All Children is an indispensable resource.