Case Study: Science Video Response

Mallory Adamson
March 31st, 2008
TE 401-Science

Videos: Case Studies in Science Education

The first video I chose to watch was of Jennie, a kindergarten teacher. The video explored her teaching methods as she designed grade-level appropriate science activities. She has taught in a suburban school for the past twenty years, so she is experienced with teaching using inquiry. Experiences in science that will be rememberable and useful in the future for her students are how she wants to teach the subject to her class, so she uses a variety of meaningful, hands on activities when teaching science. She understands that each child comes to school with a vast variety of background knowledge, which she assesses by having her students make predictions when discussing new topics in the classroom. One activity I liked that Jennie used, and may use in the future myself, was in teaching about how leaves change color and how the leaves fall and how trees change between seasons was to have her students go on a nature walk outside and collect various leaf samples. The kids categorized a huge chart in which they made associations between the leaves and organized the samples into different categories and attempted to label the leaves by tree types. This was very engaging, active and meaningful for the kids as well as relative and appropriate for the kindergarten age group. Jennie explained why leaves change, When a child gives an inaccurate observation/research, she asks the rest of the class “do you agree?” to try to get the correct answer from the students. Though it is difficult to tell a child he or she is wrong, it is important to distinguish correct answers and this was a very ‘soft’ way of doing so, so it seemed to be an appropriate method for her to use. By allowing her students to get experience making close observations, she helped them prepare for the science they will use in the future. When she met with the principal and other teachers, she realized she was taking on a lot of information to teach. I think it is very important to address all of the meaning goals, but that quality of learning is more important than the quantity of information children receive, therefore I wouldn’t try to introduce as many new concepts and topics to children so quickly, especially at such a young age when every aspect of school is a developmental task to these children.
The second video I watched was of Jean, who is a third grade teacher. The video portrayed her teaching strategies as she explored ways to teach science to diverse learners as she has several special needs students in her classroom. As she avoided science when she was a student, she now tries to make science engaging for her students, so she tries to teach in methods other than in using a textbook. One thing she exemplified throughout her teaching that I liked and will use as a teacher is that she motivated her students to learn by creating meaningful and enjoyable science activities and she truly worked to make sure her students had a solid background understanding of new topics when they were introduced, so students wouldn’t be lost as the information developed, and she made sure at the end of a topic that her students had a solid understanding of the material as well. She did this through examples, demonstrations, inquiry-based questioning and discussions. She would have the kids explain their responses with reasoning and asking meaningful questions to fill in gaps in their understanding. Multi-sensory science activities are a strategy Jean uses, which helps students learn. Concepts are introduced in several ways, such as hands-on, pictures, text, videos, etc. to help students with different needs to learn best, which I think is beneficial even in classrooms that aren’t very special needs based and learning-ability diverse, as all students learn differently. Jean also teaches her students to collect data, and look at concepts from different views, and accept other students differences and varying responses, as science is experimental and students can come up with very different conclusions. She challenges students to use inquiry by having them experiment with unknown substances, which is engaging for kids as they loved the aspect of the “mystery”, and kids had to collect and record their data and closely observe and test their data, which I thought was structurally strong and very engaging for the kids too.
The last video I watched was of Sarah, a fifth grade teacher who works to ensure her students wholly grasp core science concepts. Her pendulum activities were engaging and inquiry-based, as students were exploring on their own and able to make a vast amount of discoveries through self-exploration, which upon completion, they discuss and connect to real-life examples and explain how pendulums work. I like that she gave the kids a chance to explore on their own, because they were capable of completing tasks on their own, came up with ideas and discoveries the teacher hadn’t realized, and ultimately were more active learners and gained more from the lesson because of their freedom to explore after the teacher scaffolded the direction of their learning, which I think is an awesome teaching method. She teaches her students that there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” in science, and explorations may need to be conducted several times and various results may come about, which is also beneficial for students so they feel in control and capable of their learning. By not modifying or correcting the students experiments, the kids were able to develop their own learning which was also beneficial.