Teaching Science 2.0

One of the most famous quotes in the history of spaceflight is “Failure is not an Option,” by Gene Kranz, Lead Flight Director during Apollo 13.  OF course, he was correct - NASA couldn’t afford to fail when lives were on the line.  This quote also shows up as the title of an education book. Over the years, I have seen the quote in many science classrooms across the country. Is this really the message that we want to send our students?  As former Packer quarterback Jim McMahn said, “…risk taking is inherently failure prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.  Would NASA ever have gotten off the ground if tens of thousands of people, from politicians to engineers to astronauts were not willing to take risks?

In order to learn, we need to take risks.  We need to push beyond our comfort zone.  Too many of our students are so worried about counting points that they are afraid to do anything original - they are afraid to take risks because they are afraid to fail.

Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University said, “The core skill of an innovator is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”  We could easily re-write this quote to say, “The core skill of a learner is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”

What would have happened to the people in this video if they would have avoided future failures instead of recovering?

We had a belated 200th birthday party for Darwin today.  The timing was great since we have been learning about the “nature of science” and “science inquiry.”  A birthday party wouldn’t be compete without a birthday card, so I decided to use this as an opportunity to conduct some formative assessment.

“Two Words, Two Sentences” is a simple strategy that can be used to enhance reading comprehension or summarize content.  Basically, you ask students to summarize what they have learned (or a “chunk” of text) by giving it a two word title and a two sentence summary.

I asked my students to work in small groups to summarize their understanding of “what science is.” They used this as they signed Darwin’s birthday card.  This formative assessment shows that they have a pretty good grasp of the core of scientific thinking!

Science Is…

…A way of analyzing evidence.

… A way of understanding the natural world.

-Happy Birthday Darwin! Lindsay, Kelly & Adam

Evident Truth

Science is the exploration of the natural world using observations, experiments and activities. It is evidence based and does not include the Supernatural

- Layla, Heather, Carrie

Discovery World

Science is the ability to know by assuming that the natural world can be explained using natural evidence.  Science is awesome!

-Happy Birthday Chuck! Staci, Katie, Lisa

Exploring Nature

Science is a way that humans understand the world through natural explanations. It involves testing of theories to find evidence that connects to scientific knowledge.

-Jenna, Kelsey, & Colleen

Prove It!

Science is a method of trying to explain the natural world using natural evidence. Science focuses on measurable & testable phenomena using facts, not faith, to explain it.

- Erica, Erik, & Adam

Natural Knowledge

Science used natural evidence to explain our world. The common questions that should be askied in science are what is true, how does it work, and how did it get there?

- Ambria, Melissa, Megan

Teachers often struggle with engaging students in deep discussions about content.  The typical dialogue pattern is – teacher asks, one student responds, teacher confirms, teacher asks the next question.

Student learning is increased when they are given a larger voice in the discussion.  One strategy for doing this is the “Volleyball Technique.”  This technique is described in Page Keeley’s book, Science Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning.

In this technique, the teacher “serves” a question. Several students respond to the question as if “setting the ball” up for each other.  Eventually, the “ball” goes back to the teacher who “serves” up the next question.

When you first start using this technique, it is helpful to have a SOFT prop.

Quite often, U.S. students are compared to International students and found “lacking.” The Third World College Exam gives you the chance to see actual questions from India’s 11th grade entrance exam.  Many of these questions would challenge the best U.S. students…and many U.S. adults.  There is a lot of talk about reforming U.S. education so that we can remain competitive in a global economy.  So, here is my question…  Does this exam identify what you want U.S. high school kids to be able to do?  If not, what questions would you suggest?

Here is a great formative assessment technique-

Give every student a blank sheet of white paper.  Provide them with a question or writing prompt to respond to anonymously.  Now comes the fun part!  Tell the students to crumple up their paper and have a snowball fight (no head shots)!  Let the paper fly for a while and then ask each student to grab one snowball.  Smooth them out and ask a few students to read the responses.  Collect all of the responses so that you can review them after class.

This technique can be used in many situations where you would like to get anonymous (non-threatening) responses from students.  It can be as simple as “how is class going,” an assessment to find their initial knowledge, or a diagnostic “check up” to help you adjust your instruction.