Successful Science Teaching: Improving achievement and learning engagement by using classroom assessment


Book Description

Teachers simply do not have the time to do any more work. Yet the pressure to improve results is ever-upwards. The emphasis in this book is not on doing anything extra, but on doing all the everyday things that science teachers do – planning lessons, marking work and exams, providing feedback, and getting students involved in discussions, or self and peer-assessment – in a slightly different way. The book is full of simple, practical, formative assessment techniques and strategies, based on real classroom practices, repeated across the range of ages and abilities at secondary levels, in a variety of schools, that have been repeatedly shown to significantly improve examination results, and student involvement in lessons. Whether you are just about to embark on a career as a science teacher, or you have been one for many years, there is bound to be something here.




Strategies for Successful Science Teaching


Book Description

Strategies for Successful Science Teaching is an exciting new text for science education classes, and a supplement for teachers of science (especially new teachers). It is aimed at K-8 teachers, but can also help 9-12 teachers. For administrators and others, the book will quickly become a standard reference on current science education strategies. Easy to navigate and presented in a discussion-style format, the book addresses: -the inquiry approach, -process skills, -lesson planning, -adapting science for special needs students, -integrating science with other subjects, -assessment of science activities, -technology and other creative teaching strategies, and -research and resources. Most chapters include a sample lesson plan with hands-on activities that illustrate the concepts discussed. In some instances, several examples are included. Appropriate websites are also provided. The chapters are short and readable. Appendices include lists of curriculum kits, activity books, organizations, periodicals, suppliers, and technology resources, in addition to the typical bibliography. These extensive appendices provide abundant resources for science education. Strategies for Successful Science Teaching is a must-have for science educators. A comprehensive resource, it never loses sight of the wonder of science and the pleasure of teaching it.




Team Teaching Science


Book Description

In Team Teaching Science, Ed Linz, Mary Jane Heater, and Lori A. Howard demonstrate the truth in the old adage " Two heads are better than one." This guide for developing successful team-teaching partnerships that maximize student learning will help preservice and inservice special education and science teachers in grades K- 12, as well as methods professors in science education programs who want to cover special needs issues in their curriculum. Using both research-based practices and personal insight from experienced team teachers, the authors strive to make team teaching beneficial for students and accessible for teachers. Linz, Heater, and Howard provide background information on science teaching and team teaching and, most important, six chapters on how to teach specific science topics and how a co-teaching team can proceed through the school year.The basic elements of collaboration are introduced, along with chapters on co-teaching strategies to implement in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. The authors, who have years of co-teaching experience, offer practical advice that teachers can apply to their own classrooms. Teaching a diverse group of students is one challenge teachers will likely encounter in a team-teaching environment; the authors address the difficulties that may arise, as well as issues related to assessment, curriculum, and necessary accommodations and modifications. For those tackling the challenges of team teaching, this book will prove to be a valuable resource for making team teaching a positive experience for both students and teachers.




Tools and Traits for Highly Effective Science Teaching, K-8


Book Description

A must-have for every elementary science teacher striving to be highly effective and for every support person addressing the needs of science teachers. - Linda Froschauer NSTA President 2006 - 2007 This important book helps us understand the details of effective science instruction in the elementary grades. Our job is to learn from this work and use it as we prepare future teachers and support current teachers as they collaborate to become effective elementary science teachers. - George D. Nelson Director, Science Mathematics and Technology Education, Western Washington University At last, we have a comprehensive resource that can help teachers, administrators, and anyone who deeply cares about the science learning of our children... help elementary teachers become both "highly qualified" and "highly effective" teachers of science. - Page Keeley Senior Science Program Director, Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance What does top-notch, learning-centered teaching look like in science? To move from competence to excellence, what should teachers know and be able to do? Tools & Traits for Highly Effective Science Teaching, K - 8 answers those questions and shows you how to make powerful practices part of your science instruction. Even if you have little formal training or background knowledge in science, Tools & Traits for Highly Effective Science Teaching, K - 8 pulls together cognitive and educational research to present an indispensable framework for science in the elementary and middle grades. You'll discover teaching that increases students' engagement and makes them enthusiastic participants in their own science learning. Tools & Traits for Highly Effective Science Teaching, K - 8 answers vital and frequently asked questions: How do you structure inquiry-oriented lessons? What assessment probes and seamless formative assessments work best? What is integration and what is it not? How can literacy be powerfully linked to science learning? How do you manage activity-based learning? How do you provide science for students with various abilities. language proficiencies, and special needs? Its practical, proven, and research-based advice helps you understand what strong science teaching looks like and gives you the repertoire of skills you need to implement it in your classroom. The National Science Education Standards say that "everyone deserves to share in the excitement and personal fulfillment that can come from understanding and learning about the natural world." Whether you are reassessing your own teaching or examining it in light of state and federal science-education mandates, Tools & Traits for Highly Effective Science Teaching, K - 8 will make a difference in your teaching and in your students' lives.




Ambitious Science Teaching


Book Description

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.




Teaching Science in Diverse Classrooms


Book Description

As a distinctive voice in science education writing, Douglas Larkin provides a fresh perspective for science teachers who work to make real science accessible to all K-12 students. Through compelling anecdotes and vignettes, this book draws deeply on research to present a vision of successful and inspiring science teaching that builds upon the prior knowledge, experiences, and interests of students. With empathy for the challenges faced by contemporary science teachers, Teaching Science in Diverse Classrooms encourages teachers to embrace the intellectual task of engaging their students in learning science, and offers an abundance of examples of what high-quality science teaching for all students looks like. Divided into three sections, this book is a connected set of chapters around the central idea that the decisions made by good science teachers help light the way for their students along both familiar and unfamiliar pathways to understanding. The book addresses topics and issues that occur in the daily lives and career arcs of science teachers such as: • Aiming for culturally relevant science teaching • Eliciting and working with students’ ideas • Introducing discussion and debate • Reshaping school science with scientific practices • Viewing science teachers as science learners Grounded in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), this is a perfect supplementary resource for both preservice and inservice teachers and teacher educators that addresses the intellectual challenges of teaching science in contemporary classrooms and models how to enact effective, reform




Science Teachers' Learning


Book Description

Currently, many states are adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or are revising their own state standards in ways that reflect the NGSS. For students and schools, the implementation of any science standards rests with teachers. For those teachers, an evolving understanding about how best to teach science represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and it will require most science teachers to change how they teach. That change will require learning opportunities for teachers that reinforce and expand their knowledge of the major ideas and concepts in science, their familiarity with a range of instructional strategies, and the skills to implement those strategies in the classroom. Providing these kinds of learning opportunities in turn will require profound changes to current approaches to supporting teachers' learning across their careers, from their initial training to continuing professional development. A teacher's capability to improve students' scientific understanding is heavily influenced by the school and district in which they work, the community in which the school is located, and the larger professional communities to which they belong. Science Teachers' Learning provides guidance for schools and districts on how best to support teachers' learning and how to implement successful programs for professional development. This report makes actionable recommendations for science teachers' learning that take a broad view of what is known about science education, how and when teachers learn, and education policies that directly and indirectly shape what teachers are able to learn and teach. The challenge of developing the expertise teachers need to implement the NGSS presents an opportunity to rethink professional learning for science teachers. Science Teachers' Learning will be a valuable resource for classrooms, departments, schools, districts, and professional organizations as they move to new ways to teach science.




The Art and Science of Teaching


Book Description

Presents a model for ensuring quality teaching that balances the necessity of research-based data with the equally vital need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual students.




The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching


Book Description

Higher education is a strange beast. Teaching is a critical skill for scientists in academia, yet one that is barely touched upon in their professional training—despite being a substantial part of their career. This book is a practical guide for anyone teaching STEM-related academic disciplines at the college level, from graduate students teaching lab sections and newly appointed faculty to well-seasoned professors in want of fresh ideas. Terry McGlynn’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach avoids off-putting pedagogical jargon and enables instructors to become true ambassadors for science. For years, McGlynn has been addressing the need for practical and accessible advice for college science teachers through his popular blog Small Pond Science. Now he has gathered this advice as an easy read—one that can be ingested and put to use on short deadline. Readers will learn about topics ranging from creating a syllabus and developing grading rubrics to mastering online teaching and ensuring safety during lab and fieldwork. The book also offers advice on cultivating productive relationships with students, teaching assistants, and colleagues.




Effective Science Teaching


Book Description

Furthermore, Brian Woolnough argues that the best form of effective science teaching is through student research projects, in which students take a problem of personal concern to themselves and tackle it, worry at it, persevere in it and, meeting its challenges, produce their own solution. Such involvement in genuine scientific activity is, it is argued, not only possible in schools but essential if school science is to do justice to our students and to the scientific enterprise itself.