Monthly Archives: October 2013

My Future Science Classroom

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At the beginning of the year, I wrote in my “Autobiography of a Science Learner” that science was pretty much a subject I took so it would look good on transcripts. I had no idea what teaching science to elementary students would entail, but I figured I would give it a shot. Over the course of the last two months, TESLA has transformed my perception of teaching science and even science in general. I experienced how rewarding it is first hand to discover scientific truths after building from what I knew already. After our experiments and discussions, it became much easier to grasp what I would need to do as a teacher in order to give my students the same experience with science. 

My vision of teaching science places emphasis on building off of children’s prior knowledge. We read an excerpt from Harlen about why children’s ideas matter, and this really struck a chord with me. We should introduce science to children starting at the bottom: their own (quite possibly misguided) ideas. For many years, it was common practice to approach science ideas by asking students to know definitions and then following up a reading on a scientific concept with an experiment. This practice results in students blindly accepting facts that they do not actually understand.

In the article on KLEWS, I learned how to properly structure a science lesson so students develop a deeper understanding of science. In the KLEWS model, teachers begin a science lesson by asking their students what they think they know about a topic. There are no wrong answers here, which I think is crucial in encouraging full participation. The lesson goes on to include claims, evidence, reasoning, remaining questions, and finally, the scientific principles and vocabulary that help explain the phenomena. They finish with the broad definition of a concept once they have a personal experience (the experiment) to which to compare. Students maintain an active role in filling out the KLEWS chart, which is important because once they interact personally with the experiment, they can accommodate new information into their worldview and adjust their perceptions. This adjustment is true learning.

In class, we did a magnetism experiment that followed the basic steps in KLEWS. At the beginning, Mark asked us to shout out what we thought we knew about magnets. Sometimes we said simple facts such as “they attract to each other” and sometimes they were far more complex. Then, we performed an experiment to test how the orientation of magnets affects their interaction. After recording our data, we filled out a planning matrix where we listed our claims, evidence from our experiment to support those claims, and the reasoning behind those connections. I got to see first-hand how effective a strategy it is when we start with personal experiences and build from there.

KLEWS

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In the article KLEWS to Explanation-Building in Science, we learned about a specific procedure to follow when teaching science. The procedure, called KLEWS, allows students to track their learning throughout an investigation, building up to the understanding of a scientific principle. We start with K- What do we think we know? This step extracts students’ prior knowledge and gives the teacher an idea of what each student brings to the table (whether it’s correct or not). The next step is L- What are we learning? Students would fill out this column while investigating with different claims they have to answer the guiding questions. Simultaneously, students fill out E- What is our evidence? In this step, students list their observations that they feel substantiate their claims. Next, the students come up with ideas for further investigation or subsequent questions that came up throughout the investigation in the W- What do we still wonder about? column. Last is S- What scientific principles/ vocabulary help explain the phenomena? This step is the last of the investigation, once students have already made claims and listed their observations. In this step, the teacher explains the concept behind what they learned. It is crucial that this is the last step because students can make connections to a general concept from their own, personal experience in the investigation. It also brings the class together at the conclusion of an experiment. It allows the teacher to consolidate students’ knowledge in a concise manner. Students should be the ones to dictate the scientific definitions and vocabulary because if it is in their own words, that demonstrates that they are working with their own knowledge and applying it, rather than just repeating a concept from a book.

The KLEWS chart moves through all the steps involved in scientific reasoning: CER. C stands for Claims, which we make in the L section of KLEWS. Then, E stands for Evidence just as it does in KLEWS. And last, R stands for Reasoning. In the KLEWS chart, it is the S section that involves scientific reasoning. Throughout an investigation, students list their observations and claims to answer a guiding question from their observations. Then, at the end, they learn science definitions which they re-construct to explain specifically how their investigation works because of a scientific principle. In CER, the Reasoning portion means connecting the evidence to the claim and explaining why the evidence supports the claim. One must use scientific ideas in the reasoning portion. The R- and S-aspects boil down to the same thing.

KLEWS and CER help facilitate science learning because it moves students from hands-on activity to minds-on activity. It directs an investigation to build on what the children know until they hit a scientific proof. The students actively participate from the start and even in the last step, the scientific principle that explains their claims and evidence must be constructed from their own thoughts and words. Because KLEWS builds on students’ prior knowledge and involves their input at every step, it makes the final concept much more tangible for them. They truly will understand the concept, not just memorize a definition of the concept. In addition, KLEWS and CER require students to reflect on and verbalize their learning at every step in the scientific process. This metacognition is powerful for learners because it will pinpoint any holes in their logic, allowing students to focus their attention on the problem, rather than have an overall hazy understanding because of a misconception or flawed reasoning. Overall, the use of KLEWS and CER in a science investigation promote a more objective, clarified, and thorough understanding of science.