Teaching and Learning Science through Writing
Posted: Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
by Amanda Smith
Writing is a powerful, effective tool to help students learn and understand science. When students write for you, their teacher, their explanations often lack clarity and precision because they realize you already know and understand the content matter. But when their target audience knows nothing about the content matter, the student’s explanation must be much more thorough and clearly written. Consequently, a great way to get your students to learn actively and improve their writing, too, is to have them write about a specific science concept and choose a “layperson” intended audience such as a parent, friend, or sibling. Sometimes I ask my students to write as someone or something else, such as the journey of a single blood cell through the circulatory system from the perspective of the blood cell. Students often enjoy choosing their own format for writing, so even though you give them the topic, consider allowing them to choose whether they want to write an essay, letter, poem, or comic strip with illustrations. This provides the teacher with a fun group of assignments to read and grade, and gives students a chance to truly showcase their interests and talents while deepening their understanding of science in the process.
There are many benefits of writing in the science classroom, such as incorporating background knowledge, becoming better readers, and gaining more organizational skills. Writing drastically increases retention of science content, as well as enhances the development of science vocabulary. When students begin to learn how to be great science writers even as early as kindergarten, then their confidence can grow with every grade level all the way through high school. In my own classroom I enjoy using a variety of methods to get my students involved in the writing process. Some of my personal favorites are beginning my class with a specific content-focused writing prompt, and evaluating science articles and current events. I spend time developing and scaffolding these strategies with my students, and over time they show a great deal of improvement in both science knowledge and writing.
With Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards prompting us to change the way we teach science, the focus on writing needs to be both on-going, authentic, and across disciplines. If the teacher provides feedback to the student with each writing piece, the student’s writing skills science knowledge can increase synergistically. By providing a classroom environment that allows students to feel safe to be creative and explore new ideas as they build proficiency, we have a great opportunity to help our students learn to read and write about science in a variety of different contexts and venues.
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Applications Invited for Appointment to the California Practitioners Advisory Group
Posted: Wednesday, February 10th, 2016
The State Board of Education (SBE) is currently seeking applications to fill up to 15 positions on a newly constituted advisory committee, which will be called the California Practitioners Advisory Group (CPAG), to provide input to the SBE on ongoing efforts to establish a single coherent local, state, and federal accountability system. The advisory committee will also serve as the state’s committee of practitioners under federal Title I requirements.
All applicants must currently meet one or more of the practitioner categories listed below:
- Superintendents or other Administrators
- Teachers from traditional public schools and charter schools and career and technical educators
- Principals and other school leaders
- Parents of student(s) currently enrolled in the K-12 public education system
- Members of local school boards
- Representatives of private school children
- Specialized instructional support personnel and paraprofessionals
- Representatives of authorized public chartering agencies
- Charter school leaders
- Education researchers
Written by California Science Teachers Association
CSTA represents science educators statewide—in every science discipline at every grade level, Kindergarten through University.
Review the High School Draft of the K-12 Computer Science Framework
Posted: Tuesday, February 9th, 2016
The first review period for the K-12 Computer Science (CS) framework – developed by Code.org, the Computer Science Teachers Association, and the Association for Computing Machinery, along with more than 100 advisors within the computing community – begins February 3 with the release of the high school (grades 9-12) layer of concepts and descriptions of K-12 practices. We invite you to review the framework and participate in the opportunity to shape a vision for K-12 CS education. Learn More…
Written by California Science Teachers Association
CSTA represents science educators statewide—in every science discipline at every grade level, Kindergarten through University.
2016 – Already a Busy Year in California Science Education
Posted: Tuesday, February 9th, 2016
by Lisa Hegdahl
As I write this message, it is the waning days of January. Only the first month of 2016 and yet a great deal is happening in Science education within the California Science Teachers Association and the state of California as a whole. Indeed, this an exciting time to be a science educator. Let’s take a look back at all that has taken place these past few weeks.
California Science Framework Public Review Sessions
Science educators gathered in San Diego on December 2, 2015 to review and provide feedback on the first public draft of the California Science Curriculum Framework.
The beginning of January 2016 found California at the end of the first public review of the draft California Science Framework. A dedicated, 25 member, CSTA NGSS Committee under the leadership of co-chairs Laura Henriques, Past President of CSTA, and Peter A’Hearn, CSTA Region 4 Director, coordinated 30 Framework review sessions in 22 California counties in which 625 educators participated. In addition, many people sent their feedback directly to the California Department of Education. The members of the NGSS committee, those that read the Framework, and those who attended and hosted review sessions, volunteered in order to make the Framework useful for all of us. This represents countless hours of personal time. You can be confident that CSTA will keep you informed about the dates for the 2nd public review of the draft CA Science Framework currently scheduled for June-July 2016. A copy of CSTA’s response to the first draft is available here (1MB). I will be attending the two meetings where public comments are considered (February 19 and March 18) by the Science Subject Matter Committee of the Instructional Quality Commission to advocate on behalf of CSTA membership. Learn More…
Written by California Science Teachers Association
CSTA represents science educators statewide—in every science discipline at every grade level, Kindergarten through University.
The NGSS Crosscutting Concepts ARE Science Content!
Posted: Monday, February 8th, 2016
by Pete A’Hearn
“How come if people evolved from monkeys, monkeys aren’t turning into people now?”
I’m going to bet that any science teacher who has taught evolution has run into this question at some point. There are a bunch of incorrect assumptions behind the question, including the idea that evolution is a process that we could observe occurring during our lifetimes. This idea is directly addressed as part of the NGSS Crosscutting Concept of Scale, Proportion, and Quantity with the idea that:
- Phenomena that can be observed at one scale may not be observable at another scale.
and
- Time, space, and energy phenomena can be observed at various scales using models to study systems that are too large or too small.
(Note that this is not the crosscutting concept called out in the middle school evolution topic. Teachers will need to used multiple crosscutting concepts as well as multiple practices in building coherent units – not just the ones highlighted in the standards). Learn More…
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Written by Peter AHearn
Peter A’Hearn is the K-12 science specialist in the Palm Springs Unified School District and is Region 4 Director for CSTA.
The Big Idea Page: A Creative Way to Emphasize the Crosscutting Concepts for Three Dimensional Learning
Posted: Monday, February 8th, 2016
by Jennifer Weibert
Making three-dimensional learning a reality in the classroom of teachers starting to implement the NGSS can be a struggle. In many cases, the Crosscutting Concepts are often an afterthought. According to A Framework for K-12 Science Education, “…the purpose of the Crosscutting Concepts is to help students deepen their understanding of the disciplinary core ideas, and develop a coherent and scientifically based view of the world” (NRC, 2012). This is achieved via the Crosscutting Concepts, “because they provide an organizational schema for interrelating knowledge from various science fields into a coherent and scientifically based view of the world” (Achieve, 2016). The NGSS were designed for all three dimensions (Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts) to work together allowing the teacher to create an environment where students make sense of real world phenomena. To measure the success of this in an NGSS aligned classroom, teachers need access to evidence of student understanding and thinking. The Big Idea Page was my solution for that. Learn More…
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Written by NGSS Early Implementer
In 2015 CSTA began to publish a series of articles written by teachers participating in the NGSS Early Implementation Initiative. This article was written by an educator(s) participating in the initiative. CSTA thanks them for their contributions and for sharing their experience with the science teaching community.
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