The field of education has been becoming quite diverse and expanding with students, technology, and teaching techniques. In Secondary Education, there are content areas such as English, Science, and Social Studies, and an educator that teaches any of these content areas and more, must be able to utilize varied techniques or practices in order to meet students’ needs and learning styles. In regards to Science teaching in particular, not only does the teacher must be able to know and teach the concepts of the content area effectively, but he/she must be able to convey to the students the applications and vocabulary with those scientific concepts. Although there is an abundant of array of effective practices in Science teaching available for a teacher to use in his/her instruction, there are three strategies that are well-known and greatly documented to have improved student learning, vocabulary, and developing student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions. These effective practices are: Cooperative Learning, Word Games (Vocabulary Strategies), and Graphic Organizers.
Cooperative learning involves the students to work together in order to accomplish a goal or task. The students rely more on each other and less on the teacher (Alvermann, D. E., Gillis, V. R., & Phelps, S. F., 2013). Such practice is beneficial in Science especially in regards to the laboratory setting. With experiments, the students have to be able to work with their lab partner or groups in order to obtain accurate results. It has been shown that “humans learn best when they collaborate with others and actively process personally meaningful information” (Lin, Emily 2006). An example of a well-known cooperative learning technique that can be utilize...
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...the outcome of the students learning, recall of the material, and social interactions as they move further in their education. Although these practices have been known to work well in the classroom, a teacher should still assess each practice as they are being utilized in order to know which practices benefited the students greatly and which practices did not help the students or may need improvements since every student does learn and retain information on a different level. These effective practices along with numerous other practices are important for incorporating a diverse learning environment, positive interactions, and lifelong learning, but it is how the teacher implements each practice that makes the difference in obtaining the results needed and making such practices effective and useful in not just the Science classroom, but any content area classroom.
Stiggins, R., & Chappuis, J. (2008). Enhancing Student Learning. Retrieved from July 2009 from, http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticlepf.aspx?articleid=1362.
Teachers and students provide the following feedback to the Secondary Science Education Department at the University of Nebraska:
“COOPERATIVE LEARNING (CL), THE Instructionaluse of small groups in order toachieve common learning goals via cooperation,has made an almost unprecedented impact in educationduring the last two decades.According toJohnson, and Smith (1995)CL is oneof the most thoroughly researched areas in educationalpsychology. As they assert,We know more about cooperative learning than weknow about lecturing, age grouping, departmentalization,starting reading at age six, or the 50-minuteperiod. We know more about cooperative learning than about almost any other aspect of education.”
According to Gerlach, "Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves (Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talk that learning occurs."Collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of students working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. According to Gerlach, "Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves (Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talk that learning occurs." pair share activity , This learning strategy promotes classroom participation by encouraging a high degree of pupil response, rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response. Additionally, this strategy provides an opportunity for all students to share their thinking with at least one other student which, in turn,
This journal entry will be about the observation of a Six Grade Science class. There are twenty-four students in this classroom with one teacher, Mr. Kessler. The energy and knowledge that this teacher portrayed during his lesson was exciting and engaging. He showed that an excitement for the subject you are teaching encourages the students to learn. His students were captivated by this excitement the moment they walked into the classroom. He was energetic and joyful and the kids showed these same feelings as they sat down to begin the warm up exercise for the day.
The significance of active learning strategies is widely recognised. Past educational research has exhibited the success of teaching and learning activities that actively and collaboratively engage learners in the learning process irrespective of their age. Use of effective questioning can also improve the learning process and the teacher can assess pupils’ prior knowledge and understanding during the lesson to check whether pupils are progressing or not. In the past, when teaching science only involved standing in the front of the class and addressing for one hour to an audience of note-taking pupils. Such practice often results in information being passed from the teacher to pupils’ notebooks without bothering the minds of either. The development
In my teaching, I use the principles of active and cooperative learning. As a teacher I encourage students to understand concepts and apply them to problems, rather than simply memorize information. I have observed that the students’ motivation is the highest when I incorporate real-world examples in lectures and laboratory instructions. Most impor...
The purpose of teaching is to provide appropriate and effective instruction to students. As Science teacher we are responsible to develop and provide the necessary visual aids use in science classes (Dy 2011). Teaching physical sciences is more productive when there is an availability of the materials suited to the level of students. The use of an effective instructional material plays an important role during the teaching-learning process. There is a relationship between the utilization of an effective instructional material with the performance level of secondary students as cited in
Scarnati, J. T. (2001). Cooperative learning: make groupwork work. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 67(Fall), 71-82.
My teaching career has been spent learning how to provide appropriate support, guidance, patience, & understanding, as well as to enhance academic growth & success, for all students. My purpose as a teacher is to enrich and inspire the lives of young students with moderate/intensive needs by providing access to information instead of functioning as the primary source of information for students to flourish. My teaching methods will be to create an environment ripe with opportunities for discovery and exploration which will allow all students to learn at their own pace, generate questions and construct knowledge, while providing hands-on practice of skills in authentic situations as well as to make learning intriguing and meaningful to all students. Carefully planned and constructed learning environment will also allow the teacher more time to meet the individual needs of each student. Another important factor to a well-prepared learning environment is to facilitate learning, and providing students with balance and consistency (2004). Young students require a balance between various classroom dimensions, including activities guided by the teacher and independent work, quiet work and active work, gross motor and fine motor activities, and open and closed aspects to the curriculum and classroom materials (2004). Consistency is also a required condition for learner success. Schedules (daily and weekly), the enforcement of classroom rules, and student expectations should not be in flux but remain consistent. Without a sense of consistency in the classroom, school life would lack the necessary feeling of safety and reliability young children need to focus, to take risks, and to t...
...o listen carefully to ensure that kids are discussing scientific ideas, not socializing. The teacher's role is to ensure that students achieve their primary goal: meaningful understanding of scientific concepts. The practices described in this article help bring this about in several ways. When instruction centers on students and focuses on hands-on experience with scientific phenomena, science class becomes an exciting place. When instruction concentrates on the investigation of current problems and issues through scientific inquiry, science class becomes a relevant and meaningful place. When instruction emphasizes the development of communication skills, science class becomes an invaluable place for preparing children to tackle the challenges of adulthood. And the education community owes it to its students to assess their academic progress fairly and accurately.
They also need this relationship to be able to plan their lesson effectively. For children, understanding the nature and process of science is dependent upon their developmental level and the experiences teachers provide for them. Children can begin to understand what science is, who does science, and how scientists work through classroom activities, stories about scientists, and class discussions. Teachers should provide children with many opportunities to make observations with all their senses, to look for patterns in what they observe, and to share with others what they did and what they learnt from their
When integrating Nature of Science into curriculum, assumptions are made about students and instructors. These assumptions include that students are all at the same level in terms of science understanding and concepts as the rest of their classmates, and also assumes that the students learn at the same rates (NGSS: Appendix A). These assumptions are detrimental to science education when focus needs to be on the content being taught rather than teaching background of science as a standalone. Teaching NOS explicitly becomes increasingly difficult when students aren’t given access to proper science learning environments. As mentioned in the High Hopes – Few Opportunities reading, it is stated that, “California students do no typically experience high-quality science learning opportunities[.]” (Dorph et al., 2011). When students don’t have a basis for scientific concepts, it becomes increasingly difficult to teach NOS. America’s Lab Report further expands on the idea that this style of learning is not likely achievable, as “[N]o single […] experience is likely to achieve all of these learning goals.” (Schweingruber et al., 2005) where learning goals is referencing the goals of laboratory experiences that include understanding Nature of Science. Again, when a lack of understanding for general science exists, its arguably much more difficult to teach
Collaborative learning is an educational approach that involves groups of learners working together to reach a consensus through negotiation to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product (Bruffee, 1993). Learning occurs through active engagement among peers, wherein the main characteristics of collaborative learning are: a common task or activity; small group learning, co-operative behaviour; interdependence; and individual responsibility and accountability (Lejeune, 2003).
In Science, teachers serve as the facilitator of learning, guiding them through the inquiry process. Teachers must ask open-ended questions, allow time for the students to answer, avoid telling students what to do, avoid discouraging students’ ideas or behaviors, encourage to find solutions on their own, encourage collaboration, maintain high standards and order, develop inquiry-based assessments to monitor students’ progress, and know that inquiry may be challenging for some students so be prepared to provide more guidance. There are three types of Science inquiry: structured, guided, and open. Structured is the most teacher-centered form of inquiry. This type of inquiry is mainly seen in laboratory exercises where the teacher needs to provide structure, however the students are the ones who conduct the experiment and find conclusions. Guided inquiry is where the students are given tools to develop a process and find the results. As an example, the teacher would instruct the students to build a rocket, but not tell them how to design it. This leaves creativity and uniqueness for the students to be able to apply their knowledge and skills. Open inquiry is when students determine the problem, i...