Good ol’ Benny definitely knew what he was talking about when he said this quote. Students aren’t meant to sit in a classroom and read a book, or complete a worksheet everyday. No one learns science by just reading and writing. Students need to be able to get involved in what they are learning and be able to explore so much around them.
While students will remember you for being their teacher. They may not remember anything about the classroom if you don’t get them involved and truly enjoying the subject they are learning about.
You need to inspire your students by being exemplary. There are so many ways you can do this.
- Give students multiple experiences with something being taught. Don’t just show it to them once or twice, they will never learn that way. Some students may not understand it until the 4th or 5th time.
- Foster a love for inquiry. Make the students want to explore and get involved in what they are learning.
- Make the experiences as relatable to their lives as possible. If students can see that what they are learning effects them, then they will understand it better.
- Relate science to their other subjects in school. Even if the students don’t love science, they might love English. If they learn better by being creative by writing stories or poems, then let them.
Ozobots to learn speed in 4th period! #iteachLFU #iteachphysics #scienceisawesome #scienceteacher #sciencefun pic.twitter.com/BPszO71waK
— Amanda Ellison (@AJEllison82) August 22, 2017
Activities that can show you are truly exemplary:
- Have your students build macromolecules with various items (pipe cleaners, cotton balls, etc)
- Do a scavenger hunt at the zoo
- Make projects more open ended (both what students can do and also how they do it)
- Take the students to a nature center
Math and Science can go hand in hand when thinking at this quote. You have to get students to do science, or they will never truly learn science.
An exemplary teacher is one who can inspire their students to get involved and do science, not just read a book about it.
@spelmasm
Yes! It’s so important to be doing within the classroom and giving kids a connection outside of science classes to help them enjoy it! One idea that could be done to connect it would be letting students do an art project to create a DNA molecule or maybe doing a creative writing assignment on the possibility of how an imaginary species could exist on Earth.
@angelokm
I definitely agree that every student learns differently and presenting many different ways for teaching them is so important! Activities that would not be as valuable in the classroom would be things such as lecture and notes based learning or just working on worksheets with no input for getting students involved!
@mulligmg
I would definitely add more activities that are related to students lives, things such as a trip to a nature center could be effective in doing that as it may show wildlife for their local areas. Things such as having students go bird watching would be really good at relating it into a subject and focusing on wildlife in their lives all the time.
Using other subjects to relate into how students learn can be so important! Some students never truly enjoy science, but they may love the idea of doing a music video on the structure of DNA instead of a research paper!
@mccombae
Yes! Students need to be super involved if you ever hope for them to actually learn anything in the classroom. The more control they have in how they are learning, the better they will be as students and the more they can enjoy your class!
I think your blog does an excellent job of homing in on what’s probably the most important aspect of science teaching: activity over passivity. You talk about how students need to learn to ask questions, take charge, and explore on their own, and creating this open environment that gives your students the opportunity to control their own learning is the true product of exemplary science teaching. Awesome!
I like how you mentioned relating science to students’ lives! The awesome thing about science is that it relates somehow to everything that you do. If we can help students understand that, they may be more interested in learning about the topic or more engaged in the conversation. In your Activities that show Exemplary teaching, I’d like to see ideas that help teachers make science relatable to students lives.
I also like how you mention relating science to other subjects. Not many students may see writing a research paper “fun,” but if they can do the research, find the information, and create a skit, song, or movie that demonstrates their understanding, they should be able to express their knowledge in that way!
I though your blog post was great at explaining what an exemplary science teacher is. Your first quote was awesome! I think it is great overview on how we should be teaching our students. Your section about how to inspire students was great. I liked how you connected our class discussions and readings to your blog. You are right that it can take many experiences for a student to understand a concept, but I think the examples need to be given in different forms. This is because each student learns differently (auditory, reading/writing, visually, and kinesthetically) and you want your students to have a variety of different ways to learn. Do you agree? Also, I liked how you gave examples of different activities that are exemplary. What activities are not as valuable in a classroom? Overall, I thought your post was wonderful!
I really liked how much you emphasized that students have to do science to learn science. Many people thing of learning as a passive activity when you really need to be doing it to fully understand it. It is also important to understand that not all students are going to love science, but maybe you can connect it to another subject that they do enjoy. Do you have any examples on how you would connect science to another subject in your own classroom?