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I teach 5th grade science. I love it
Hi everyone! The Environmental Education Collaborative in Southern California is hosting an online symposium Feb 25-28 (after school and weekend hours) and we would love to have you. Our topics this year include Justice, Literacy and Wellness. Let me know if you have any questions, I'll be leading a "Bob Ross" style painting session on the Wellness day that teaches the steps of the water cycle while incorporating SEL strategies. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-environmental-education-symposium
My district just purchased Gizmos. Thoughts?
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I don’t have a specific method or source, but I love getting historical context for the topic and feel it makes the content more memorable for the student and helps with teaching a larger worldview than the seemingly random set of names, dates, and trivia many students feel they get in school right now (not sure if that’s an accurate assessment, but students and stakeholders see history education in a similar way).
For instance, I like expanding my topic of chemical reactions to talk about the history of gunpowder. I use the Russian Revolution to onboard the discussion of pedigrees. Mendel with genetics of course. Newton with laws of motion for physics and for understanding alchemy in the history of chemistry. Bernoulli for fluid pressures. Lister etc.
I find that taking the lesson and just asking myself, “how this get discovered?” leads to so much interesting content. Another good question is “what did people think before this discovery?”
Good luck with this search, I love the approach.
NJHS1, I didn’t teach waves in enough depth to talk about Snell’s law. And I didn’t go into enough depth with space science to get into all of the people who discovered everything, no no, Burnell is not talked about with pulsars. So no, but they would be interesting people to talk about and I may include Ibn Sahl, but there isn’t a lot known about him and I like the context of their lives more than just giving a name. I do include several Middle Eastern scientists and historians when talking about gunpowder, but the track record of hyperbole in that area and that time frame makes it difficult to credit properly.
I personally love to talk about Edison in context because he was so important in many facets of everyday technology we still use. And there is a reason we know his name and not all of his engineers working for him. Same as how we give credit to Steve Jobs for saving Apple and the creation and ubiquitousness of iProducts even though Jobs invented absolutely nothing. Very good point.
And you prove my point with bringing up the Texas textbooks. There are plenty of other examples of bias and even falsehood in textbooks. We have to know our material well enough to point these out. I used to use a textbook here in OK that was well known to be laughably wrong. But I had to use it since I had no other easily accessed resource at the time and I tried to point out the inaccuracies without completely derailing the class. As I am sure you do as well.
I use theatrical approach on a few lessons like dressing as a monk waving a can of peas for genetics! The students need to figure out why, my past students always tell me it’s one of their favorite lessons! The other favorite is Newton’s laws which is a murder mystery, the other teachers are the suspects. My coworkers love the interaction s it brings to their classrooms
Very fun and engaging. I would love to teach with you.
I focus on phenomena that I'm interested in. So I have an energy-focused unit that starts with roller coaster loops, a momentum unit that looks at bumper cars, an electricity unit that starts with lightning, and a light unit that starts with the blue sky. (I'm interested in a lot of phenomena.)
I find the NSTA site and this one from San Diego helpful with resources and ideas. https://ngss.sdcoe.net
https://scienceeducation.stanford.edu/curriculum/stanford-ngss-integrated-curriculum-exploration-multidimensional-world