A Different Approach to Learning

This article uses presents “science activities that use popular media tools for interdisciplinary lesson planning and differentiation.” This educator created four zones in her classroom muc... See More

This article uses presents “science activities that use popular media tools for interdisciplinary lesson planning and differentiation.” This educator created four zones in her classroom much like what elementary teachers do in their classrooms – lab, computer, literature, and discussion areas. This article provides explanations for each area, types of media samples that can be used, and the criteria for using good science media for children. Children circulate into the different areas in approximately 15 blocks of time. As the author points out, with this method she gets to work with smaller groups of students at a given time. This is certainly a different approach to learning but might be an interesting idea to try.

Well developed lessons on use of popular media!

The author has come up with an interdisciplinary way to investigate popular movies or science videos using stations. She also presents arguments to support the use of these materials. I h... See More

The author has come up with an interdisciplinary way to investigate popular movies or science videos using stations. She also presents arguments to support the use of these materials. I have to agree to all of her reasons, and the use of stations to investigate the "problems" or "questions" from the movie segments is well thought-out. Although she presents a sample lesson used in a block schedule, it could be adapted fairly easily to a two-day lesson, if review is added. However, I was confused as to when the video was actually shown and how the discussion block was organized - who leads the discussion? are there questions there for students to focus on? how are any of the stations assessed? I liked the concept of this article (the looking at the science from multiple viewpoints), which is why I gave it a 4, but some of the details as to how to carry it out in place of the reasons to use videos would have been useful.