ECE 7706 Module 2: Article One

Scientific Literacy: Another Look at Its Historical and Contemporary Meanings and Its Relationship to Science Education Reform

Synopsis 

      DeBoer introduces his article by discussing the ever-changing meaning of the term Scientific Literacy, a term that first came into light in the late 1950s. He believes that due to the "nine separate but distinct goals of education" that the term "scientific literacy" has become too specific, but that educators do not truly understand its meaning. Therefore, with a historical look at scientific literacy, the term needs to have a broader meaning. 

      In the early to mid 20th century, scientist such as Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Charles

Lyell, Michael Faraday, John Tyndall, and Charles Eliot  began to publicly speak of the importance of science within early education. Their views centered around their early knowledge of the quickly growing dominance of science and technology. These scientists also wanted to push the education system to a more independent method of teaching, which you would find through the teachings of inquiry-based science lessons. In the early years of teaching science developers spent much of their time making the science education "relevant", when it should have been focused more on the natural world's affect on our daily lives. 

      After World War II, people started to realize the significance of science and the risks that they may come from the products of science. Therefore, education changed in order to make sure that people felt more comfortable with the basic understandings of science and what it is that scientists study. This is really when people began to realized the importance of science and technology in national security. This risk was ever-more clear when Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union, yet at the same time science education also showed a lot of promise. These events also sparked the understanding that jobs in the science and technology fields were critical. Science committees began to express the importance of literacy in science, because they wanted to make sure that those studying science as a profession were not the only ones who understood what was going  on in the world. 

      The term Scientific Literacy continued to change to less emphasis on technology and more emphasis on environmental surroundings. From there, it changed slightly to the interconnectedness of science processes and society.  In the 1990's, science literacy became strongly focused on the scientific method where students were posed a problem and had to ask and answer questions regarding the topic.

DeBoer, G. (2000). Scientific literacy: Another look at its historical and contemporary meanings and its relationship to science education reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Retrieved from http://web.nmsu.edu/~susanbro/eced440/docs/scientific_literacy_another_look.pdf

Reflection

      This article was exceptionally interesting to me, because I had never actually thought about the origin of the term scientific literacy or that what was being taught in science classes every changed. Obviously, I understood that new discoveries would be made throughout the years, and that those would be later embedded into the science standards. It was interesting to see the ways in which terminology change for the definition of scientific literacy changed and the concepts being taught in science changed with what was going on in the world. For example, when Sputnik was launched science began to become more technology based, but when people were afraid of the "risks" science began to help people feel more comfortable by allowing them to understand the technology. Yet, the core of science has stayed the same from the beginning- it is inquiry based. Science should be a subject that allows people to ask questions and find answers using evidence. It is more than memorizing facts, it is experiencing the content and allowing the students to be independent.

ECE 7706 Module 1: Blog

Typical Science Lesson In My Classroom
      One of the Science lessons I taught this year was on the topic of animal adaptations. The students got extremely bored simply reading their textbook, so for this lesson I made a PowerPoint presentation using the information in the students' Science book along with a few other media resources. We would go through the PowerPoint as a class, but I would allow the students to read and manipulate the slides on the Interactive Whiteboard. After someone read the slide, we would have a class discussion/Q&A regarding the information that was just presented. For example, if the slide discussed a particular animal's adaptation such as "Animals may use camouflage to help protect themselves", and I may ask the students "What animals can you think of use camouflage as their adaptation?" or "Why would an animal use camouflage to survive?". Due to the amount of time we have for Science (30 minutes), usually going through the PowerPoint would take the entire time. As an assessment, I gave my students a note card where they had to write down two facts that they found most interesting, as well as describe the vocabulary word "adaptation" in their own words. This was something I collected as the students began to pack up to head to the buses.

Technology in Science Classrooms & How I might be Able to Incorporate Tech into My Lesson Above
     I believe, especially with out students now, that is is vital that we incorporate technology into our classrooms in order to keep our students engaged, motivated and interested in each lesson. However, as Efaw stated in his research, teachers need to feel completely comfortable with technology in order to be used effectively within a lesson. Guzey and Roehrig also discussed that teachers need to have a full and complete understanding of the science content, as well as the concepts of inquiry and how to properly transform a lesson to make it inquiry-based. 
     In my past experiences even though I am comfortable with technology, it is hard for me to successfully integrate it into my lessons because I feel as though I am not properly prepared. In my school, we have monthly technology meetings where we are taught a new form of technology that we could utilize in our classrooms, but due to the fact that I have never seen them in use, I never use them. 
      Looking back on my animal adaptations lesson, it would have been beneficial for my students if they had been able to all have a say at one time, such as through the use of the app called Socrative. This technology application allows each student to send in an answer to a discussion question or even start a discussion for that matter. With this app, students use their personal form of technology to type answers to a specific code which will then post their answer on the ActivBoard. 
      I believe that even though my PowerPoint was a form of technology, it needed to be pushed further in order to truly engage my students. It may have been more beneficial if my students could have gone through the PowerPoint at their own pace either through partner, small group or individual work time. If The students were able to go through the PowerPoint in something other than whole group then I could have made it more interactive by incorporating various other links to more information. 

ECE 7706 Module 1: Concept Map

Reflection Concept Map

      Concept mapping is something that I knew about but had never really taken part in until one of my classes in my undergrad. I think it is a good idea and assists with reflecting on the content, but getting started I would say is the hardest part. Obviously, there needs to be some sort of organization, and this is where the depth of your understanding begins to come into play. If you can organize the information then, to me, it means you have enough understanding to be able to categorize the information in an understandable and educational manner. I will say that I do sometimes have a hard time with concept maps because I tend to try to bite off more than I can chew and try to encompass a lot more information than necessary. However, after reading through the information, I realized that there is okay to make concept maps straight to the point without an over abundance of information. 

EDRD 7717 Module 5: PowerPoint Analysis

Teaching Phonics, High-Frequency Words and Fluency 

      

EDRD 7718 Module 6

PowerPoint Presentations

                I learned a lot of the stuff that was mentioned about PowerPoint presentations either through undergraduate classes or by trial and error. However, it is always helpful to hear the information again. One of the first slides needs to be an outline of the entire presentation so that the audience knows what will be covered throughout the presentation. The slides that contain any information need simply bullet point the main and most important parts of that section of the presentation. If your slides are too wordy then the audience will be too focused on reading the slide rather than listening to the details that you are trying to present. It should take from one to two minutes to discuss each slide.

                No- you don’t want the audience to be focusing a lot on the words in your PowerPoint, but you do want the audience to be able to read it. Therefore, it is important that the background is not overbearing; it needs to be simple and consistent throughout the presentation. The words also need to be big enough (but not too big) for the audience to read.

                One of the points made was that graphs do a great job of relaying data. This makes perfect sense but something I may not have thought of because I would have wanted to add information along with the graph. However, in actuality the graph can do the talking for the data. 

EDRD 7718 Module 5

      There were a lot of things from this module that really interested me. As a first year teacher, I have never actually seen or experienced effective literacy centers, therefore any little bit I learn about them is so helpful. With literacy centers it is important that the students are working on curriculum based activities and not busy work. Whether the students are working individually or with a partner, it is also important that after they are finished with their activity they have something to show for it such as a little assessment such as a ticket out the door to show where they may be in their level of understanding. However, it is not only to show their understanding, but also to keep the students accountable for their learning. The things I learned from these few videos show that I am on the right track, but there are still some things I need to work on with a balanced literacy program. I am actually in the process of getting help from my school's EIP teacher. She is going to start coming into my room and assisting me with the proper process when planning for literacy centers.
    The other topic that was discussed briefly was the classroom environment. I love seeing other people's classroom and getting new ideas on how to appropriately organize my room in order to meet my students needs. The book entitled Spaces and Places seems like a great book and actually one I may go out and purchase. She gave a brief overview of her book, but the chapter titles drew me in enough. She discussed how to plan the space in your classroom, arranging the furniture, using wall space and organizing the clutter in your classroom. The students need structure and the way the classroom is set up and organized as an effect on them.

EDRD 7718 Module 4

Instructional Methods and Strategies

      The majority of the information from this module were concerned with the RTI program/process, as well as the Common Core's effect on reading. The Response To Intervention (RTI) program/process is something we begin learning about in our undergrad and then experiencing within our schools. It is a program implemented by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that ensures that all students needs are being met within the classroom. The original tiered program has three tiers, but Georgia's RTI model has four tiers: tier one ("standards- based classroom learning"), tier two ("needs based learning"), tier three ("SST driven learning") and tier four ("specially designed learning"). This program is intended to get help for struggling students before they are classified as "Special Education". 

      The sections about Common Core and Literacy were of utmost interest to me because it is something that has been a hot topic within grade level meetings. Our students were just given an interim assessment from the county to see where the students are assessing at this point in the semester and as a team we noticed that there was a whole bunch of content specific reading from areas such as Social Studies and Science. Instead of being full of simple narrative comprehension tests, the interim test had more content specific comprehension questions. As we noticed from our scores, the students did not do as well on the reading due to the amount of informational texts. We have begun to teach our students how to read and understand these informational passages because, as was discussed within a view of the articles, just because a child can read does not mean they can understand this specific sort of writing.