Rick Lydon
Grade 7 & 8
Nashua, NH
December, 2010

Connections between How Students Learn Science and How Teachers Teach It

A teacher's life is full of questions: What am I going to teach today? How am I going to teach it? What resources do I need? How will I know if my students have learned it? What problems might arise? How will I know if I am reaching all the kids?

The teacher IS, after all, the one responsible for all this learning, not to mention the corresponding test scores, right?

ACT I: A LOOK INSIDE MY CLASSROOM

There are many paths to learning. This is especially so in the teaching of Science. When planning lessons, science teachers often work in reverse, using an Understanding By Design (UBD) framework. They begin with the science content or Grade Span Expectations as directed by their school district or state curriculum guidelines. This often determines the WHAT to teach.

The HOW to teach it becomes a little more complicated. A teacher can access a myriad of resources including textbooks, videos, online resources, activities, as well as a tried-and-true bag of tricks with lessons from years (and sometimes decades) past. Good articles can be found at every grade level on every essential knowledge statement to be read aloud, or together, or individually. Curriculum materials often come with related vocabulary lists, comprehension questions, and resources for further reading.

I readily admit that the "words" and vocabulary of science are important, even crucial to the construction of science content learning in the young brain. But is this the best place to begin a lesson - with abstract words? Or is there a better entry point that aligns with the way children construct their understanding of the world around them? Once again, enter the video camera.

Several years ago I began videotaping some of my own classes to record the process of learning as part of a Math\Science Partnership Grant sponsored by the New Hampshire Department of Education and Rivier College. This grant has allowed me to continue working together with a group of science teachers from various school districts across the state as we conducted our own research into a better understanding of exactly how kids learn science. One of the primary focuses for the group has been to introduce the Inquiry Learning Cycle into the science classroom and record our work using videotape.

Good teaching practice suggests that teachers should continuously strive to improve their pedagogy by observing classes in action and reflecting on how they can better serve their own students. Nice words, but how often do teachers actually get a chance to do this? Certainly not enough, if it even happens at all.

Lost in the daily reality of seven fifty-minute periods plus advisory, managing behavior, differentiating instruction, district initiatives, standardized testing, parent contacts, and somehow teaching the content for several levels of students in possibly two or three different subject areas, it is no wonder that most teachers are unable to purposefully reflect on their own teaching methods. They can't realistically fit it into their daily schedule.

One little Flip-Camera (about $140) changed all that. Not only did this one inexpensive piece of technology provide access for me to see what's going on in other classrooms, it opened my eyes to what was really happening in my own. It provided objective access to the process of learning that was (or was not) happening right under my own nose.

To start with, I quickly discovered that I was not the one cast in the starring role in the action-packed story of how kids learn in my own classroom. At best I was the Director, or maybe a minor supporting character who never got to be in any of the exciting action scenes. The kids were the real stars. And surprisingly enough, the stars seemed to change from minute to minute. The students were actually learning from each other, not from me. They listened intently to each other while relegating my voice to background noise. They copied each other and expanded on each other's ideas. They compared their own work to that of their peers as their own self-initiated method of formative assessment (or was it competition?)

Studying the video, unencumbered by the burden of real-time teaching, I was able to examine eye movement, body language and the actual development of thought in my students. I could tell who was "getting it" and those who were struggling to overcome misconceptions.

I would often move about the room with the camera, probing students to explain their thinking. This not only helped them to clarify their own learning, but it enabled me to move them toward new ideas and extend their understanding. And of course, they loved to see themselves on the "big screen" up in front of the classroom when I would play clips for the class to see.

The video also helped me to hear myself as my students heard me. I listened to my comments on their work, my questions to them, my response to their questions. Did I have a supportive tone? Did I validate that student's idea? Was I clear in my directions? Was I boring? Did I care? Was there a better way I could have said that?

At times painful, and at times exhilarating, I was forced to reflect on how it was that I brought about learning in my own classroom. This was hard data that I could not refute. There is nothing that informs your teaching more that observing the way that you teach. My lesson plans became more thoughtful, more purposeful, more engaging, and hopefully more effective as a result of this introspection.

ACT II: LOOKING BEYOND MY CLASSROOM

It takes courage for teachers to open the doors of their classrooms for others to observe. In this age of standardized test scores, teachers are being held increasingly accountable for the achievement of their students. Current debate on merit pay, teacher rankings to determine salary increases and allocation of Federal monies all underscore this emphasis.

Encouraging, or even permitting, assessment of one's teaching ability from any outside source involves considerable personal and professional risk on the part of the classroom teacher. How are teachers able to reflect on the effectiveness of their own pedagogy when it is so difficult for them to see what other professionals are doing under similar, if not identical, circumstances?

There are, in fact, many effective teaching styles, just as there are many learning styles. There is also no shortage of passionate teachers who bring a tremendous amount of experience, energy and personal investment into their classrooms every day. The challenge therefore, is to share this wealth of knowledge and experience in a format that is effective, informative, and safe for a wide range of educators.

Enter again, the flip-camera. Our professional learning community (PLC) composed of science teachers from around the state would meet for a couple of Saturday mornings a month to share video of what was going on in our classrooms. Our goal was to record and document data about how children learn science using Inquiry Science methods. The results and impact, however, went far beyond our original intent.

Following an established protocol, teachers would record their classrooms and present video to be analyzed and discussed objectively. Observations, speculations, and questions would be recorded along with any evidence of inquiry or student learning. We would see teachers interacting with students in their own classroom, hear the tone in their voice as they probed or validated student ideas. Together, we observed student facial expressions as learning took place: perplexed, confident, surprised, AHA! We witnessed effective methods and strategies we could try in our own classrooms. In short, the camera provided entrance into another classroom where we could observe how someone ELSE negotiated a room full of energetic youngsters toward understanding some new concept.

Amazingly, it was this glimpse of someone else's classroom that brought our own into perspective. I personally found myself recording numerous ideas from each video to consider in my own classroom. One week, the video included a segment where students were describing their own observations and an aide was recording them into a computer that was projected for the whole class to see. I took that idea a step further the following week allowing my own students to generate their own questions and enter them on my laptop, projected for the class to see. Instead of the usual group of listless middle-schoolers, the students suddenly couldn't wait to come up with a "good" question to share with their classmates.

At another session, a teacher mentioned that her students were raising a lot of questions and she needed a place to record them and keep track of them. The Wonder Board was born: a parking lot for student questions. Soon various versions were popping up in other classrooms and for subjects other than science. Other ideas, phrases and learning tools met with similar incarnations. We shared graphic organizers, resources, and tips to make lessons go smoothly.

Our forum also provided an opportunity for rich discussion regarding time and material management, differentiation, integrating literacy and math across the curriculum, and other timely topics. The problems and difficulties that arose in one classroom were not unlike those in all of our classrooms. The ability to observe children actually interacting in the learning process gave a concrete presence to our notions about how learning takes place.

FINAL ACT: JUST ANOTHER LESSON PLAN

As part of my research into how students learn science, I carefully divided my unit into a variety of modules, with each lesson plan devoted to a different learning style. There were text-based lessons, hands-on demonstrations, labs, and activities, formal video presentations, worksheets, lecture with note-taking, explanations with models - every method I could think of to teach the basic concepts in the unit. The order of the units however, would be intentionally varied so that I could perhaps see if there was indeed a preferred method of delivery.

My assumptions were that concrete learning experiences should precede the more abstract (verbal) experiences for optimal learning. Students would learn better if they based their abstract understanding upon something concrete, which they had experienced in a real world interaction. And so, I began videotaping the various lessons, with both traditional and video interviews to assess their understanding.

The data, however, proved to be inconclusive regarding my hypothesis. There was no pattern to the order in which lessons were presented with respect to assessments of their content understanding. Nonetheless, the data captured was quite irrefutable: students learn in a variety of ways. Some learned from the demonstrations, some from the textbook, some from the hands-on activities, and some from taking notes.

If the flip camera has taught me anything, it is that I have much to learn: about my students, about myself, and about the teaching profession itself. The data it can provide will be a valuable resource both for myself as an educator, and for the discussions about how children actually learn. I strongly recommend that educators take a look at what is happening in their own classrooms. It's quite amazing!