Group items tagged

Earth Day is around the corner - April 22nd - and every year teachers and students try to come up with new and innovative activities. Recycling is a popular activity to keep the idea recycling going strong. Classrooms often come up with ideas to recycle paper, ink cartridges, plastic bottles, metal cans, and newspapers. However, there are other recycling activities that students can get involved in to support Earth Day.

Active learning has a powerful impact on student learning. How? Student achievement increases through mastery of science and math content as a result of this technique. Students also develop improved problem solving, communication, and higher order thinking skills.

Strategies are provided for classroom integration, creating survey, and science or math activities.

Effective teaching is at the heart of science and math education. Good teachers of science and math create environments in which they and their students work together as active learners.

Projects in science are provided which take full advantage of Internet resources to help students develop a better understanding of the world in which they live.

Often we search for meaningful ways to integrate digital technology in project based learning activities given to our students. We also would like our students to develop a thorough understanding of the concepts underlying the work - after all this is the purpose of the project. Giving students the opportunity to complete and present their project through a digital lens has one great advantage - student engagement. This in turn causes students to develop a more in depth understanding of concepts.

Integrating the science process skills within your teaching does not require drastic changes. It simply involves making the process of science more explicit in lessons, investigations, and activities you are already using in your curriculum. The science process skills are the methods used for helping our students understand how we know what we know about the world in which they live. This often means going beyond a science textbook and supplementing the core-content within textbooks. It also means using your course content as a means for exposing students to the real process of science.

Stimulating critical thinking using technology has the potential to create more in depth understanding of science and math content by students when engaged in learning activities which integrate in-class and on-line technology resources. Technology tools support stimulation of both inquiry-based and critical thinking skills by engaging students in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, inventing, problem-solving, and experiencing the world outside their classroom. This is accomplished through learning content through the lens of video to multimedia to the internet (Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement, NCREL, 2005).

Projects in science are provided which take full advantage of Internet resources to help students develop a better understanding of the world in which they live.

Six math projects that integrate real-world math problems are presented as a teaching strategy for helping students develop a greater understanding of math.

Math activities proven successful with learning disabled students are presented, along with a description of factors that influence struggling special needs students.

Encouraging students to use critical thinking is more than an extension activity in science and math lessons, it is the basis of true learning. Teaching students how to think critically helps them move beyond basic comprehension and rote memorization. They shift to a new level of increased awareness when calculating, analyzing, problem solving, and evaluating.

Web-based learning centers engage students by using interactive internet resources aligned with inquiry-based hands-on classroom activities to learn science concepts.

Math journals provide advantages for students to develop a better understanding of mathematics, with teachers learning their student's views and beliefs regarding math.

Students learn how to conduct science investigations in the same manner as scientists, as they learn to analyze sets of online real time data to solve problems.

"Ever wondered how to make science or math flash cards for students to use with their mobile devices? This typically comes about because finding science and math flash cards specific to a particular concept, topic area, or unit is difficult. Often when appropriate flash cards are found, they are too expensive or need modification. Technological advances have uncomplicated the process of making tailor made free flash cards for students."

A list of teacher resources that can easily be modified and incorporated into the earth science classroom.

Projects in science are provided which take full advantage of Internet resources to help students develop a better understanding of the world in which they live.