Reflection on Science & Literacy

I found the Science & literacy reading to be stimulating. One of the questions that I had while reading the end of the first paragraph was, "What is meaningful science?" I think I know what it is, but I would really like to post that question to the rest of the teachers in my department. I fear that between NCLB and preparing the students for the state test at the end of the year, many of them have forgotten to make science meaningful and fun!

In the first strategy about performance expectations the author mentions that some teachers tell their students to "do better", but fail to take the next step which is to show the students what "better" looks like. Luckily more an more teachers are using exemplars and samples of student work in the learning process.

In the second strategy about explicit teaching strategies the author describes a Write as You Read Science strategy which sounded better than nothing but might not be as useful as the SQ3R method where the students first Survery the reading assignment to stimulate prior knowledge, then write a Question for each major heading or section, next the students Read the passages looking for the answers to the questions they wrote. The second R is for Recording the answers to the questions. The final R is Reviewing the notes in preparation for an assessment. This technique might not be as colourful as the other method, but I think it is a valid alternative.

Finally I was truck by the "storyteller in your head" for the metagcognition strategy. I am not certain that it fits all learning styles, but I know that it works for me and some of my students.