The Importance Of Teaching Science

The process skills approach to teaching is defined as the educator helping children develop science skills and processes to confidently undertake their own investigations (Campbell, 2012). These skills are developed through: communicating, science language, asking questions, making sense of phenomena, predicting, modelling, conducting investigations, planning, testing, observing, reasoning, and drawing conclusions of science concepts (Campbell, 2012). When the educator assist children’s learning, it is important to put the emphasis on the nature of science and scientific concepts. Guided discovery approach to teaching requires the educator to ask effective questions that encourage children to explore and extend their investigations throughout science learning (Campbell, 2012). This can be developed through play experiences as children explore their world around them. An interactive approach to teaching children is based on questions that lead explorations and the educators to provide essential resources to guide these explorations (Campbell, 2012). It is the educators’ responsibility to support children’s development, ideas, questions, ways of thinking, and develop scientific thinking. Furthermore, an inquiry approach to teaching relates to children investigating the answers to their own

Integrating other learning areas in our unit of work and exercising more resources that teachers can use in the classroom base upon our science unit is also a crucial element that our group was missing that needed to be included in our presentation. The classroom environment should include lots of books, visual materials, ICT devices and activities to facilitate learning and keep the student’s interests by promoting questioning and discussion to stimulate their science thinking processes and skills in a creative and encouraging environment. (Pitcher, 2014)

During the course of the year, we learned about the Investigation-Colloquium Method (I-CM) of the teaching science which emphasizes that children learn more by interacting with their peers, sharing their thoughts and collaborate information among themselves. As the word colloquium suggests, it is an informal gathering of peers during a discussion, it is during this discussion children expand on their learning experiences. This method is similar to what Vygotsky would have considered as the “Zone of Proximal Development.” His theory suggested that during a colloquium children tend to sharpen their perception which will, in turn, promote mental growth. As a future teacher of science, my goal is to base my lesson plans on the I-CM method by using it as a benchmark for my instructional practices. Some of these approaches would include concepts, materials, investigations, use of data charts, creative dramatics, and closure to name a few. Each of these subcategories of I-CM further enhances the concept of this method which will be discussed later in further detail. However, in my opinion, the role of a teacher is the pinnacle entity for a successful colloquium among children and an even more successful pedagogy of science.

Through this standard, teachers will engage all students in science by setting goals for students that correlate to state and national standards. Through various strategies (i.e. learning activities, instructional settings, technology) students will achieve the goals set by the teacher and fair assessment strategies will be used to determine if the goals were met. Through the use of laboratory/field settings and various technology, students will demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of science. Teachers will also design lesson plans that provide opportunities for active inquiry in which students can collect and interpret data in order to develop and understand various scientific processes. Fair assessment strategies will also be used to evaluate students and their preconceptions and understandings that have been

It provides a clear guideline for what every student should know and be able to do in math and in English language arts at the end of each grade (Common Core Standards Initiative, 2010a). The English language arts and literacy standards were written to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their respective fields, such as science. Great emphasis is placed on literacy skills within the context of science learning characterize “science teachers as sharing responsibility for literacy acquisition” (Scruggs, Brigham, & Mastropieri, 2013, p.50). However, it is important to note that “literacy standards in history, social science, science, and technical subjects are meant to supplement content standards in those areas, not replace them” (Common Core Standards Initiative, 2010b, p.

Based on the NSTA Position statement, the curriculum of science from kindergarten through 12 grades has kept changing during the century of rapid development of science. Those changes increase the complexity of teaching and learning science. Teachers are required to design the science class that provides sufficient and effective activities of science to students. In addition, students are expected to complete the task by following the instruction and to adopt the factual knowledge replacing the superficial information or isolated facts. The importance of science programs is to assist students to adapt the community of the well-developed science, and develop student’s self-assessment skills.

Science is the process of observing, thinking, and reflecting on actions and events, for young children science involves constructing the relationship within which the factual information can be organized into meaningful concepts ( Brewer, J.A,2007)Therefore, engaged in the science and discovery centre children will firstly, gain the knowledge the basic science concepts and show the familiarity with the terminology. Secondly, children would adopt the scientific skills for observing, communicating, comparing, classifying, organizing , measuring and experimenting. Thirdly, being involved in the science and discovery centre children will develop dispositions, and show interest to investigate unusual objects and events. Likewise, children will

In addition to research based programs that integrate science and literacy learning into one combined lesson there are other strategies that teachers can use to integrate these two subjects. The 5-E’s model for lesson planning is an effective way to structure science lessons to incorporate literacy learning. The 5-E’s include engaging the student in the learning, exploring the content topic, further learning is done through explaining the topic, students are then required to elaborate on the topic, and then asked to evaluate their learning. In the article “Content Area Literacy: Individualizing Student Instruction in Second Grade Science” (Connor et al., 2010), researchers created the ISI-Science curriculum and implemented

Scientific literacy is not defined by what the person knows in science but defined by how they perceive the information that is given. Nevertheless, in my content area literacy skills could be life or death. In science when dealing with chemicals individuals must read thoroughly. It is easy to misread a chemical that can be hazardous and mistake it for one that is not. For example, hydrogen peroxide and dihydrogen monoxide are two different chemicals, but could easily get mixed up by a student. Another situation where literacy plays an important role in science is understanding the directions. If a student does not comprehend the directions accordingly, then they may be misinformed on what to do with the assignment. In addition to these particular literacy skills, the ability to analyze is also crucial to the scientific field. One of the first objectives, students learn in science is the scientific method. The key component in the scientific method is the hypothesis and the ability to analyze the results. Students who lack the ability to analyze text or results will most likely not understand what occurred in the experiment. They will also not be able to elaborate and discuss their results. A great intervention to reduce error and to build on student’s literacy skills is to provide students with

According to Susman (2013), “science is a moving target, forever advancing and getting more complicated. It’s hard to keep up and really hard to catch up. What you learn in high school is often so different by the time you have kids of your own that you can’t easily help them with their science homework. Science changes faster than iPod models”. In this case study, Clifton High School principal believed that “students learn Science by doing, not simply by watching” (Picciano, 2011, p. 182). In 2009, the principal had trouble recruiting qualified science teachers and providing a full Science teaching program.

Scientific-based instruction is something that teachers use all the time in their classroom. Teachers are consistently assessing and evaluating students’ performance, creating and amending individual education plans, lesson plans, and reflecting on their practices. As teachers, we should be doing rigorous research and building hypothesis to base further teaching practices on.

The National Curriculum for Science (2013), anticipates to advance all pupils’ scientific knowledge and conceptualise understanding through the segmented scientific approaches; biology, chemistry and physics. In addition, pupils should have an awareness of the nature, processes and approaches used within science, through the various scientific enquires that enable pupils to answer questions related to the world and life. Finally, the aims of the science curriculum also consider that children must have the resources to fund the knowledge that is necessary to use science in the, present and future tense states the Department of Education (2013).

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

This research focuses on science in early childhood education, because as an educator I have always had an interest in science and I often wonder whether I am teaching this topic effectively and correctly for the children. I will define ‘What is science? And I will use a minimum of six articles relating to my topic. What is Science? Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, defines science, Science is both a body of knowledge that represents current understanding of natural systems and the process whereby that body of knowledge has been established and is continually extended, refined, and

Science is, by its nature, inquiry based and science knowledge is built through processes in which discoveries of the natural world are made (Abruscato, 2000). It utilizes discovery and scientific thinking process to explore and learn knowledge and skills. Learning by doing is the new efficient method in teaching science. For kindergarten, this method leads to better understanding of science concepts and builds skills that children will use in future life .What a child can do with assistance now, they can later do on their own (Vygotsky, 1978). John Dewey (1916) stated that children must be engaged in an active quest for learning and new ideas. Inquiry is important in educating kindergarteners because it not only keeps them interested in lessons but also helps them retain more information when performing exploration and investigation. Children are naturally motivated to learn and actively seek out information to help their understanding (Piaget, 1950).The success of students who participate in hands- on inquiry activities suggests that if students have first hands experience with science, concepts are easier to understand and apply and students are generally more favorable to science and have better understanding of the nature of science .Within a conceptual framework, inquiry learning and active learner involvement can lead to important outcomes in the classroom. In kindergarten, students who are actively making observations, collecting results and drawing