Fri, Jul 26, 2024 9:47 AM in Classroom Management During Experiments
So I'll be blunt about what I think doesn't work, before others suggest it. I do NOT propose doing safety unnecessarily - for instance, if students were measuring the density of water with plastic grad cylinders and non-electrical balances (i.e. no safety risks at all) making students wear goggles, gloves, etc. to PLAY at being scientists. Under these conditions, they know the...
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Sun, Sep 17, 2023 9:09 AM in Teaching new topics
Bri - Unfortunately, if you look at the NGSS (and any state standards derived from them) density is not an acceptable topic in elementary school anymore - in fact, it is EXPRESSLY forbidden here in MN. The reasoning is that density is a ratio between mass and volume, and thus is abstract and not a concrete concept. Abstract (or as Piaget called it, formal) reasoning ability doesn'...
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Sat, Apr 15, 2023 8:08 AM in Native American moons, turtles, months, etc. are we teaching it correctly?
This has become a little bit of an obsession with me. I think inclusive science is great. But it has to be _correct_ and I worry that the way it is being presented on the internet glosses over the details to the point it becomes a just-so story, rather than something that was the product of careful observation and searching for patterns – i.e. science. I would love for someone t...
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