SUBJECT: Courses for elementary education majors
DATE: 4/95; 3/97
I know some of you on biolab are involved in biology courses for elementary
education majors, and I REALLY need to know what you do in lab. There is
a
3-semester science sequence here: physical, earth, and life. This is the
third year for it, and the first time I've taught it. I began trying to
plan
for this course in October, but no one could give me any information. I
was
finally given a lab manual (written by one of last year's TAs but omitting
much of the best material, I later found out) on the first day of the
semester and it is so bad that we've been trying to use other handouts.
Students come to lab twice a week for 75 minutes each time.
At the end of the semester various people connected with the course will
meet
to discuss what to do next fall. Although I want to teach this course and
there is a lot I enjoy about it, the labs have been a huge frustration for
me. Apparently the philosophy in developing the course was to give el ed
majors activities they could take to their classrooms. I think that's a
good
idea, but the question I kept asking was: How do you give college students
a
grade for doing elementary level work? I was told "you test them on
the
concepts from the labs" but that didn't work. What has happened is
they get
100% of the lab points. This also reinforces the belief many students have
that they only need to learn science at an elementary level, since that's
what will be in the textbooks they use.
My solution would be to have more challenging college-level labs, then append
to them ready-to-go lab activities that are suitable for young children.
That
way students would get the ideas for activities without actually doing them
in lab. For example, one of the labs that was a sore point with the TAs
was
"Make A Cell." Students used macaroni, etc, to represent organelles.
They
enjoyed it, but when they couldn't answer the exam questions on cell
organelles even the students began to see that maybe their time could be
better spent.
One thing I've done is give students the "Benchmarks" from Project
2061 for
topics we've covered in lecture and asked them to describe an activity they
might do with elementary students. Then their ideas are typed up and handed
out to the whole class. Many students have shown a lot of creativity with
that, so that's another way they can acquire hands-on activities for their
own classes.
I don't really want to write new labs for this, and I certainly don't want
to
(can't) write elementary-level activities -- does anyone know of a commercial
manual that's suitable for this kind of course?
If you have a course like this, what's the lab philosophy and how is it
implemented?
Jean Dickey
dickeyj@clemson.edu
Jean -- I don't teach elementary education major science courses, although
I have many el ed majors in my Biology classes. The philosophy under
which our science education folks work is that our students need to learn
how science works, meaning that they need investigative labs -- labs where
they ask a question and work their way through designing and conducting
experiments. Of course, they cannot learn all of this at one time, but
during the second quarter of the two-quarter biology sequence, we begin
to
develop these skills. The students begin by identifying variables and
drawing conclusions. Gradually we add other aspects, such as deciding
which variables must be controlled and how, identifying assumptions,
designing data tables, and designing the experiment. By the end of the
quarter, the students have two weeks to do their own project. It makes for
a challenging lab experience, but at the same time models, to at least some
extent, the kinds of lab experiences we would like our students to design.
What you might do is something similar, but then ask students to take
one of the important concepts modeled in the lab and design an exercise
that retains the investigation aspect but for a younger age group.
Good luck!
********************************************************************
Gail Schiffer gschiffe@kscmail.Kennesaw.Edu
Biology, Kennesaw State College 404-423-6167
P.O. Box 444, Marietta GA 30061 Fax: 404-423-6625
*********************************************************************
Hi Jean,
My first thought on reading your post was the Wisconsin Fast Plant
manual for Middle School (Carolina sells this). Also, there is a lot
of "Bottle Biology" activities that are part of the fast plant
manual, or perhaps this is a separate manual now?
When I've done workshops for school teachers they have gotten a lot
of info on plant biology that they never got in any of their college
course, so the elementary nature of the exercises were instructive at
all levels...
Good luck!
Graham R. Kent
Dept. of Biology
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
gkent@smith.smith.edu
There is a separate manual titled "Bottle Biology". It is
published by Kendall/Hunt and costs about $18.00. The ISBN is
0-8403-8601-X.
The manual has many interesting activities for classes at various
levels.
Helen Pigage
USAF Academy
PigageHK%DFB%USAFA@dfmail4.usafa.af.mil
Jean Dickey's comments on the biolab network this morning about teaching
prospective K-8 teachers bring up an important issue in the teaching
of biology. I happen to think that this group of our students may be
one of the more important groups to which we should be addressing our
effort to improve biology (read science) education. After all, it is
these teachers who will be encouraging/discouraging new generations
of children to become/not become scientists. If we don't do a good
job at our level with the prospective teachers, how can we expect
them to do a good job when they are out in the K-8 classrooms. Would
there be interest amongst the biolab folks planning on attending ABLE
to have a mini-workshop/discussion about these issues?
Ned Lyke
Department of Biological Sciences
CSU, Hayward
Hayward, CA
elyke@csuhayward.edu
Jean,
Dr. Kathleen Fisher at San Diego State University teaches such a course,
for which she has developed a manual under an NSF grant. You can contact
her at the following e-mail address: kfisher@sciences.sdsu.edu
I spent fall semester 1993 in her lab as part of a sabbatical leave. She
does some interesting things, provides students with things they can do
with their own elementary students, but teaches the class at a college
level.
Good Luck!!
Sincerely,
Roger Christianson 503-488-0223 (home)
Department of Biology 503-552-6747 (office)
Southern Oregon State College 503-552-6415 (fax)
1250 Siskiyou Boulevard rchristi@max.sosc.osshe.edu
Ashland, OR 97520
As a component of a large NSF project I am preparing a "workbook"
for our
nonmajor's biology course. The philosophy behind the project is to teach
future teachers the way we would like them to teach. For us this means
the use of constructivist and cooperative learning structures. The
workbook is not a lab manual in the usual sense because it contains
activities for both classroom and lab environments. The organization of
the workbook is based loosely on the concept of the "learning cycle".
Each unit begins with a list of specific learning goals. This is
followed by a set of "exploration" activities and problems. In
the
learning cycle "term introduction" follows explorations, and I
have
included brief definitions and discussions of key concepts. The last
part of each unit are "applications". The applications include
(in most,
but not all cases) an investigative lab activity.
We are in the first year of this project and much of the material has not
yet been tested in a classroom or laboratory. I anticipate having a
complete draft version of the workbook available this summer. At present
I do not have a publisher, although a couple of companies have expressed
interest.
I would be interested in sharing ideas and materials with people. If you
will email me I will send you a sample unit of the workbook (and put
you one the list to recieve a copy of the completed workbook when it is
ready.) In return I would like to know what you think of the material
and if you would consider using it in any of your classes.
Richard Weisenberg
Department of Biology
Temple University
rcw@astro.ocis.temple.edu
Hi again:
This is a neat discussion. In our program, elementary education majors
take a "smorgasbord" of science courses, almost always including
our mixed
introductory biology course. That's one of the reasons I think it's so
important to emphasize science process in both lecture and lab -- it helps
them understand what science is really about, and seems to go a long way
toward reducing the kind of "science is too hard" attitude that
is so
devastating when it's taken into the elementary schools.
Doug's note about teaching materials reminded me of another possibility
--
the Project Wild materials. I haven't used them myself, but have heard
rave reviews from former students who have. These were put together by
various Fish/Wildlife agencies and such; I believe they can be accessed
by
calling local Fish and Wildlife or Departments of Natural Resources. My
understanding is that they include a variety of lessons and activities for
K-8, and the local coordinator will run workshops and training sessions
for
free.
I only wish I were attending the ABLE meetings this summer (unfortunately,
I'll be in the middle of a relocation at the time). Next summer for sure!
Kerry
Kerry S. Kilburn
Department of Biology
West Virginia State College
There are two of us at Ricks College ( Lynn FIrestone and Ririe Godfrey)
who teach a Non-majors biology lecture and lab course ( lab and lecture
taught as two separate classes) to elementary education majors. We
teach between 350 and 400 students a year, in this one-semester course.
We also have our elementary education majors take specialized geology
and physical science courses designed just for them.
In our biology class we cover a few body systems, the cell, cell division
and genetics, and biochemistry of the cell. The material is taught at the
same level as other non-majors biology courses taught on our campus. In
the lab we do experiments in osmosis, microbiology, the cell, a lab on
science investigation methods, one on the senses, photosynthesis, cellular
respiration and fermentation, enzymes, and an acid base lab. The labs are
designed for college students but we try to point out how the basic
principles could be presented to elementary students and how
inexpensive and easily accessible materials can be used to do the
experiments.
At least one of us will be at the ABLE meetings in June and would be
very interested in discussing how to improve our course and in sharing
ideas on how to handle the preparation of elementary teachers so they
will be more effective at stimulating young, budding, scientists.
From: Lynn Firestone
FirestoneL@ricks.edu
I am very interested in the discussion of training elementary teachers,
although we do not have an elementary ed program here. (We do have a
secondary ed program.) I earned my first degree in elementary education
and am very interested in this program. I have run some workshops for
elementary education teachers and hope that we will become involved with
elementary science in the not too distant future.
During my first five years of college teaching, I taught at Plymouth
State College in New Hampshire. It was a teachers college recently turned
liberal arts, but still predominantly teacher ed. There I taught lots of
elementary ed majors. We raised the same questions about curriculum for
them that you folks are now raising. Our solution was to create a set of
half term courses such as garden in a bottle, aquarium in a bottle (and
about 20 more that I can no longer remember). These were designed to
attract elementary ed majors and to apply basic biology about plants and
animals to practical uses they could apply in their courses. I understand
that the mini courses worked out well, but I moved to Michigan and never
got to teach one.
***********************************
Janice M. Glime
Department of Biological Sciences
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
jmglime@mtu.edu
906-487-2546
FAX 906-487-3167
***********************************
I have done some elementary teacher workshops at the schools here
in Boston and this summer will participate in a Math/Science Workshop for
teachers K-8. At the recommendation of my wife (a second grade teacher)
I
will be using Science and Technology for Children(STC) materials which
were developed at the National Science Resources Center(NSRC) under the
auspices of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of
Sciences. These are age and grade appropriate kits with materials,
teachers guides and student workbooks. I'll be using the "Life Cycle
of
Butterflies" kit which takes the students through the entire life cycle
of
the painted lady butterfly. My wife swears by it and I have seen some of
the responses and projects by the kids. This kit is designed for 2nd grade
and there are similar kits available (or under development) for grades K
through middle school(Organisms, Plant Growth, Balancing and Weighing,
Food Chemistry, Weather, etc). Carolina markets the kits, some of which
are fairly expensive, but once you have done it, it is pretty easy to save
money by just ordering the consumable components. I don't believe that the
kits are in the regular catalog but if you call them and ask for the
elementary catalog I'm sure that they will send it along.
G. Douglas Crandall, PhD
Biology Department, Emmanuel College
400 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
(617) 735-9959
There's no doubt in my mind that Science Literacy starts here, by ensuring
that our children's first experiences in science are rewarding and
informative.
We have a two semester "Teaching Elementary Science" sequence
here at
Carlow College: one semester earth/physical science, one semester life
science. This was my first year teaching the life sciences half of it.
Unfortunately I have not found any single textbook or lab manual
particularly suitable for these students. As I see it, we need to provide
them four things through these courses:
1) an understanding of the scientific content (i.e. knowing scientific
concepts at least as well as our non-majors),
2) an ability to apply the scientific method in investigations,
3) a collection of quality science exercises to start using in the
classroom, and
4) an ability to create their own grade-appropriate investigational
exercises for their students which support their learning of these
concepts, and tailored to the students' life experiences and surroundings.
My problem is that any book that's useful in meeting one of these
objectives does little to support the others. I need an introductory
biology textbook (1,2), a lab manual of elementary exercises (3), and a
text on elementary science teaching pedagogy (4), all wrapped up into one
(or even two) affordable books. Any authors out there?
I find my students (teachers and non-majors) rather underprepared in
science. Therefore I am most reluctant to just hand them canned exercises
without them really knowing, at a level far beyond elementary school, the
concepts those exercises teach. (I should state that these two courses are
the only science requirement for these students; they take these in lieu
of
the non-majors course.) Are others approaching their courses with the same
general objectives as I've listed? Which do you feel are most important?
What are you using as texts or resources within each of these objectives?
Rick
RICHARD P. HERSHBERGER, PH.D.
_ _ |_ Asst. Prof. of Biology * CARLOW COLLEGE
| |_| | | 3333 Fifth Ave. * Pittsburgh PA 15213
| hersh@telerama.lm.com * (412) 578-8702
Three cheers to Janice who lobbied for offering practical tips to elementary
science teachers! My wife falls in this category and has often lamented
in my
direction that there aren't more "easy-to-execute" programs or
labs dealing withthe sciences.
In general, she and her colleagues all seem well versed on the importance
of
teaching the process of science rather than disconnected facts and terms.
Unfortunately, they lack the time and materials to create effective lessons
that do just that. In fact, they hardly have the time to boil water, let
alone make agar or a microscope diaphragm.
I hear them pray that someone clever will create a series of ready-to-use
lessons...preferably reuseable "kits," complete with text and
labs materials.
It may sound like a crutch, but that seems to be what the brave folks on
the
front line are asking for.
Regards,
Bob Nash
Coast Telecourses
Coastline Community College
Fountain Valley, CA
bnash@cccd.edu