What's keeping you from doing science? - how to overcome the two most common obstacles to teaching science

Instructor, March, 1996 by Lynne Kepler

Practical ways to leap over the two most common science-teaching hurdles

At the National Science Teachers Association Convention last year, the editors of Instructor and I asked teachers like you: What is your biggest challenge in teaching science? The two most mentioned were: 1) a lack of science know-how and 2) a time and money crunch that made it tough to collect materials. With this in mind, I talked to teachers across the country who have successfully high-jumped these hurdles, and asked them how they did it. Here, they share their tips on conquering science shyness and building a successful hands-on science program.

HURDLE 1: "I don't feel comfortable teaching science!"

Teaching science did not come naturally for Pat McCoy, a fourth-grade teacher at Nova-Blanche-Forman Elementary in Broward County, Florida. Like many elementary teachers, Pat had little pre-service science training and was not comfortable with the subject. "I didn't like science when I was in school," says Pat. "The main thing I remember is being forced to cut up a frog!"

But three years ago Pat took a science course to get the certification credit she needed at Florida Atlantic University and discovered there was a little Madame Curie in her after all. Her professor, Nancy Romance, immersed Pat and the other students in hands-on science activities, and Pat found she loved it. Recognizing how motivational science could be, Pat was eager to introduce it to her students.

Be a Collaborator

Pat left the course with a new awareness: You don't have to know all the answers to teach science.

"I realized that no one teacher could have all the answers all the time, and that saying to children, 'I don't know how this is going to turn out, but we'll find out together,' isn't a bad thing. In fact, when you do that, you're behaving like a scientist."

Pat says her students relish that she doesn't have all the answers; learning becomes a kind of treasure hunt for them. "They find out information on their own. They use their computers or ask their parents, and tell me the next morning what they have learned."

Integrate Science

Pat began teaching science by introducing a few activities she had done in Nancy's class. Gradually, she folded more and more science into her lesson plans, and now it's at the core of her curriculum. In the course of the year, her fourth graders use science as the basis for exploring mandated subjects, including the state of Florida, weather, the changing Earth, the rain forest, and the solar system. Pat integrates social studies, reading, and writing into these topics, relying on carefully chosen fiction and nonfiction trade books rather than on a basal reader, workbooks, and the like. "The scariest part about giving up the basal was worrying that I wasn't covering the skills," says Pat. "I've learned to explicitly refer to the skills, stating them often. For example, when my students are doing a writing assignment during our winter unit, I'll ask them to incorporate adjectives, and we will talk about them directly."

Connect Reading and Writing

Pat's students became stronger readers and writers as a result of doing hands-on science. Their achievement test scores rose substantially, especially in problem solving and critical thinking. Explains Pat, "Science activities give children concrete models of abstract concepts like sequencing and cause and effect. They can actually see the cause and effect."

A case in point: When Pat's students are studying air, they fill a soda bottle with hot water, wet the rim, and put a penny on top. They hear the penny ring as it jumps around. Afterward, she asks students to write what they observed and label the cause and the effect. A student might write: When the air inside the bottle is heated (cause), the air expands (effect).

Science even gives students' creative writing a lift - after they study air, they might write fact-based fiction. For example, Pat will say: I am a heated molecule of air. Tell me what I am doing, where I might go, and what I might see.

Pat's newfound ease with science is bolstered by resource books that give her the background knowledge to teach hands-on activities well. Her favorite series is by Janice VanCleave (published by John Wiley & Sons). Pat advises, "Choose simple experiments and test them before doing them with students." (For other great resource suggestions, see page 55.)

Strive for Sense-Surround Science

Walk into Pat's classroom in mid-September and you'll find yourself in the midst of a hurricane-watch center. Come March, it's a greenhouse. By April, you can journey inside the Earth. These environments are often created inside the bubble, a dome Pat made from plastic sheeting. (For instructions on making a bubble, write to Lynne Kepler at Instructor, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012; or e-mail her at Howl Hollow@aol.com) For Pat, the bubble is proof of her conviction that kids learn best when they build a model of what they're studying.

"Kids need to involve their hands as they learn," says Pat. "And when they make the concept life-size, they really see it and come to understand it."