While NSTA declined to send its members 50,000 donated copies of Al Gore’s film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, you can request a free copy here.
The first 50,000 teachers who apply are eligible to win. There is a limit of one DVD per teacher. All entries must be received by January 18, 2007
You’ll need your school’s tax ID number to enter; see your school secretary to get this number.
Nov. 7, 2006
BELLINGHAM - A group of education leaders from across Washington State, led by the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership at Western Washington University, has developed and released a web-based resource to help teachers use science notebooks to improve student achievement in both writing and science.
The new Web resource was introduced at the combined Oct. 13 joint conference of the Washington Science Teachers Organization (WSTA) and the Washington Organization for Reading Development (WORD).
The Science Notebooks Web site can be found at www.sciencenotebooks.org.
Every teacher struggles to use the limited hours in the school day to teach all core subject areas well. But there are strategies that can get more out of each of those hours, helping students learn more in multiple subjects. The use of science notebooks, a relatively new practice, is one such strategy.
Science notebooks are a place where students hone their writing skills to formulate and refine questions, make predictions, record data, describe procedures, compose reflections and communicate results. Most importantly, notebooks provide a place for students to chronicle new concepts they have learned.
When students are encouraged to describe their understanding of concepts through writing in science notebooks, these notebooks become an effective strategy to help students learn science. Research has shown that such writing also strengthens students’ language skills.
The use of science notebooks in classrooms across the country has grown steadily in recent years, yet few resources are available to support teachers in using this important teaching practice well.
“This new resource provides teachers with everything they need to see ways to connect their science and writing instruction. Being web-based means that teachers across the state can access the resource at a time and place convenient for them,” said Dennis Schatz, vice president for Education at the Pacific Science Center and co-director of Washington State LASER, a statewide science education reform group.
By reviewing hundreds of actual student notebooks, the group of education leaders explored how teachers were asking students to record their ideas in their science notebooks. Analysis of the student work revealed eight distinct strategies or “entry types,” each used with a specific purpose in mind. The Web site was constructed to describe these entry types and illustrates each with multiple samples of student work stored in a searchable online database. The samples come from students of all grade levels, demographic groups, and geographic regions.
“Teachers are looking at the samples of student work on the Web site to better understand what students at their grade level are capable of producing. When they show those samples of student work to their own students it increases their motivation and improves the quality of their work,” said Peggy Willcuts, Elementary Science coordinator for the Walla Walla Public schools and science specialist for Batelle/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The site also includes classroom lessons, research citations, and frequently asked questions about science notebooks to provide teachers a robust resource. In almost every section teachers can submit new samples of student work, assessment tools, writing templates, or other resources so that the site can grow and evolve based on the needs and interests of its users.
The Science Notebooks Web site was developed through the work of the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership, a five-year National Science Foundation funded project led by Western Washington University, that is focused on improving the teaching and learning of science at all levels.
The partnership consists of all of the school districts in Whatcom and Skagit counties, plus 13 districts on the Olympic Peninsula, Western Washington University, the Northwest Indian College, Whatcom Community College, Skagit Valley College, Everett Community College, ESD 114, ESD 189, and Washington State LASER.
Carolyn Puelz
Office of University Communications
WWU, OM 300, MS 9011
Bellingham, WA 98225-9011
Tel: (360) 650-3350
Fax: (360) 650-6817
E-mail: carolyn.puelz[at]wwu.edu
Here are a few templates teachers have found useful when helping students write conclusions.
For those of you doing OEL, or those of you who just need a quick and easy lesson plan for a substitute teacher, we are working on developing a bank of lessons that can stand alone or be incorporated with one of the modules. Here are our first two offerings (as always, feedback is encouraged!):
The Institute for Systems Biology has created a list of science-related books, both fiction and nonfiction, for students and adults to enjoy. (Excel format)
Another teacher and I were just discussing the conversion between pounds and Newtons. The actual English unit is pound-force.
1 pound-force = 4.4482216 Newtons
You can use this handy calculator to perform a grossly unnecessary number of different force conversions.
You can also check your answer by “converting” Newtons to Kilograms, then multiplying by 2.2 to convert to pounds.
1 kilogram-force = 9.80665 newton
1 kilogram-force = 2.2046226 pound-force
(This isn’t a true conversion because it assumes you’re in Earth’s gravity; otherwise, it’s not valid.)
I re-wrote my old brine shrimp article to make it more aligned with what I want students to know and do in the second Diversity of Life lab. It also doubles as a simple lab sheet for the brine shrimp investigation. Here’s the article: BrineShrimpArticle.doc
Some people call it the “guilt sticker for gas guzzlers,” but there’s good science and good economics behind it. TerraPass is a for-profit company that invests in clean energy and CO2-reduction projects. Their website lets you calculate how much carbon dioxide your car emits in a year, then charges you the amount of money it costs to get rid of that much carbon dioxide.
When you purchase a TerraPass, we pool your funds with other TerraPass members and invest them in clean energy projects that are guaranteed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in an amount proportional to those put out by your car.
Here’s a neat little series of graphics from their main page to explain how it works:
Your car emits 10,000 lbs (three times its weight!) in carbon dioxide each year.
You enroll in TerraPass.
TerraPass members finance projects that reduce greenhouse gases.
Your TerraPass purchase is certified to eliminate the equivalent of your car’s CO2 emissions.
I just bought the Standard Level sticker, to offset the 15,000 or so miles we drive in our Saturn each year.
What do you think of this? Check out their site (especially the FAQ) and let me know. I learned about the TerraPass via this Wired article.
I saw this really cool display of pocket balances (the kind that fold up and can be put away) at the NSTA convention. This seemed to me to be a better way to prevent theft of balances, which is a major problem in many areas because they are used by drug dealers. One school I worked in was burglarized three times in a month for its balances. HBI International only sells to schools and other institutions, and you have to pay with a P.O.
Shani from Showalter MS says:
I created an alternative to the Anchor Activity in the Catastrophic Events text. I think others may find it useful. I know after trying the text’s anchor activity the products I received were not what I wanted and did not prove to me the students had done the research and transferred the information. The alternative I created seemed to give me much better results.
Download: catastrophic-events-research-project-research-requiremnts.doc
