Science in Action

In case you have noticed, we have recently added a new feature to Discovery Education Science for both Elementary and Middle School.  If you go to the “Teacher Center” section of Discovery Education Science and click on “Process Skills Library” you will find a new tab for “Hands-on Labs”.  All of these labs utilize everyday materials and fully developed to enhance your classroom instruction through extending the Virtual Labs into a hands-on experience.  Below the description of each lab you will see a student worksheet link and to the right of that you will the Virtual Lab that the hands-on activity coincides with.  Check them out and lets us know what you think.

Discovery Education works beautifully with the 5 E science lesson model.  Let’s take a closer look at how it fits:

Engage- An “engage” activity should do the following:

1. Make connections between past and present learning experiences
2. Anticipate activities and focus students’ thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities. Students should become mentally engaged in the concept, process, or skill to be learned.

Build a simple PowerPoint using embedded video and images to introduce a concept you are working to convey to your students.  You can find these in the Learn section of DE Science.

Explore: This phase of the 5 E’s provides students with a common base of experiences. They identify and develop concepts, processes, and skills. During this phase, students actively explore their environment or manipulate materials.

We have our own Explore section within DE Science that fills this requirement for you that includes Explorations, Virtual Labs, Integrated Science Simulations, and FUN-damentals.

Explain: This phase of the 5 E’s helps students explain the concepts they have been exploring. They have opportunities to verbalize their conceptual understanding or to demonstrate new skills or behaviors. This phase also provides opportunities for teachers to introduce formal terms, definitions, and explanations for concepts, processes, skills, or behaviors.

If  you look within our content you have a couple of options for this strand.  Within the Demonstrate section of DE Science you will find BCR’s (Brief Constructed Responses), which have students provide written explanations to what they have learned.  You can also create Writing Prompts, which can be found in the Building Tools section of DE.

Elaborate: This phase of the 5 E’s extends students’ conceptual understanding and allows them to practice skills and behaviors. Through new experiences, the learners develop deeper and broader understanding of major concepts, obtain more information about areas of interest, and refine their skills.

Here is where students can use tools like MovieMaker, Photostory, iMovie, or may web 2.0 tools to make connections between prior knowledge and newly learned concepts.  Over half of DE content is editable so there are n copywrite concerns.

Evaluate: This phase of the 5 E’s encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and lets teachers evaluate students’ understanding of key concepts and skill development

DE Science allows teachers to utilize our formative assessments for each unit or to create their own assessments built around state standards.

Marina Dimitrov, an eighth-grader in Bozeman, Mont., who showcased innovation and creativity in a series of scientific contests, including the removal of graffiti from replicas of New York City icons, was named America’s Top Young Scientist in the 2009 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. A student at Sacajawea Middle School, Marina receives $50,000 in U.S. Savings Bonds, among other prizes. She was one of 10 finalists selected nationwide to compete in New York and tackle challenges focused on “The Science of Everyday Life,” including inventing a solution to a common problem using only household items, removing impurities from water, and building a tower that can withstand a simulated earthquake. Finalists were evaluated on their science skills and their ability to communicate scientific knowledge.

Exciting news today from Discovery, Science Magazine, and amazing group of scientist:  The world’s oldest and most complete skeleton of a potential human ancestor — named “Ardi,” short for Ardipithecus ramidus — has been unveiled by an international team of 47 researchers.

They have dedicated a website to the find (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/ardipithecus/ardipithecus.html), which includes an interactive guide that follows the human branch of the evolutionary tree in addition to links describing the find and the skeleton of “Ardi”.

In addition there will be an premiere of “Discovery Ardi” on the Discovery Channel that will air Sunday, October 11th at 9:00 PM EST.

If you are studying evolution with your students these resources on the “Ardi” website are great additions to the material within Discovery Education Science, which include a Video Quiz on Biological Evolution, an exploration on animal evolution called “A Whale of a Tale” as well as many other great resources.  Yet again Discovery becomes your one-stop-shop for everything science!!

Experimental design is something that many middle school students  have trouble doing independently.  For years I have done the same lab to teach this concept to my students. The students love the lab, but I don’t love the results.  This year I decided to try teaching experimental design  with a virtual lab. My students chose to do the sound advice lab from Discovery science.  Their mission was to find out if listening to rock music on an MP3 player  causes  hearing damage. My students used the explore section to research sounds and  to learn what decibel levels are. They learned how to read graphs that demonstrated the level of sound  decibels reach that can damage a person’s hearing. Then the students set out to design an experiment to test their hypothesis about the damage that MP3 players can cause if played at a loud volume.The lab was relevant to their world. The virtual lab made it easy for me to have 80 students researching, testing and writing at the same time.  When the students finished writing up their experimental design plan they turned it in to me to critique. In the past, I  would write notes to my students about what they did right or wrong on their experimental design plan.  This year I made a change. I used my Ipod touch to give each student an individual critique. Using garage band I made a simple podcast file of what the student did right and wrong on the experimental design write up.  I emailed the podcast file to my students.  They listened to their crtique in class on the computer, and then fixed any parts of the design that was incorrect.The students did the best job they have ever done on designing an experiment. Many of them told me that this method of conferencing helped them know how to fix their writing mistakes, or correct design flaws.  I haven’t felt this good about teaching scientific writing in a long time.  Try a virtual lab this year, and you’ll say what I say: “Virtual lab to to the rescue.”

Want to get kids interested in science? Show them how they can use it to better the world they live in. Take Jathan Kron, Justin Roth and Brennan Nelson, three middle school students from West Branch, Iowa. Jathan, age 12, was helping his father sweep out his auto repair shop, and notices that he was throwing away all these lead wheel weights that are attacked to tires for stabilization. The weights fall off cars all the time, making them one of the biggest sources of lead released into the environment.
Jathan and his two friends, together with their science teacher, discovered that the lead weights are completely unregulated and started measuring how much of the lead is leached into the environment.

Using this data they began a campaign to replace the lead weights with steel. Three bills banning the weights have been introduced in the Iowa legislature and the Environmental Protection Agency is considering a similar ban. To top it all off, the boys won the grand prize in the inaugural year of the “We Can Change The World Challenge” sponsored by the Siemens Foundation in partnership with Discovery Education and the National Science Teachers Association.

Over 2000 middle school students from across the US entered the challenge last year; this year it has been expanded to include elementary school students, and in 2010 high schoolers can enter. The contest requires teams of two to three students under the mentorship of a teacher or other adult to identify an environmental issue in their community, research the issue using scientific investigation, and create a replicable green solution. The winners receive a $5000 savings bond, an appearance on the Planet Green cable network and the chance to present their findings to a panel of United Nations environmentalists.

Second place for the 2009 prize went to three girls from St, Philip the Apostle School in Addison, Ill., Angel Lozzio (13), Maggie O’Brien (12) and Data Gattone (13). “We started because we wanted to make a difference,” says Maggie, and their solution was to figure out how to get their town and school to recycle. They dropped off flyers and handed out recycling bins, carefully monitored the response, and discovered that recycling participation started to soar. “We were really amazed that we could make this much of a change,” says Angel.

The enthusiasm these kids feel about their projects is infectious, and makes me feel a little better about the future. For all the wailing about the state of our schools, the declining science and math skills of our students, the fixation on TV and video games over books and larger world, the fact is it seems like plenty of America’s children are engaged, industrious and full of ideas. We adults just have to figure out how to harness that energy, and keep the enthusiasm flowing. If a friendly competition is what it takes, then kudos to the Siemens Foundation (which also sponsors the prestigious Siemens Competition in Math Science and Technology).

Year two of the Siemens Change The World Challenge kicked off on Aug. 19. Entries can be downloaded at www.wecanchange.com .

There is a great article from Scientific American Mind that presents new strategies and pedagogy for teaching science across all grade levels. The key points talk to:

• Two recent reports from the National Research Council call for significant changes in the way science is taught in elementary school. Unlike previous recommendations, the new suggestions reflect recent findings about how young children think and how they acquire knowledge.
• Research shows that children learn best when they regularly revisit topics, moving from basic to sophisticated views. In keeping with this knowledge, education experts advocate curricula in which students deepen their understanding of a topic—and hone their abilities to practice science—across many grades.
• The most effective teaching expands both the knowledge and the skills needed to engage with science authentically—that is, in a manner akin to how scientists work. To practice science in the classroom calls for problem- and project-based lessons, as well as considerable social interaction. As is the case among scientists, argumentation and discourse help students to refine one another’s ideas and to articulate their own.

You can find a portion of the article here.  The key points and strategies of the article talk nicely to ways we see teachers utilizing Discovery Education Science in that material expands and teachers can revisit material at their discretion.   The virtual labs and explorations within Discovery Education Science authentically engage students when paired with the student related materials.

Below is part of an amazing video from NASA that ties nicely with a class study of weather, climate, water cycle, or the atmosphere.  This video relates very well to our Discovery Education Middle School unit Weather and Climate: Climate Change where you find interactives, additional video content, and reading passages to take your student’s knowledge to a new level.  For elementary teachers there is additional related material within Extreme Weather and Climate, which is a part of the Weather and Climate unit.  You can find the full video from NASA here.