Science in NC

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Fifth Grade Teachers Chatboard

Science in NC

by deNC

Jun 23, 2011

This will be my second year teaching fifth grade science in NC. Last year, I felt that I was finding my way. We do not have text and our kits do not hit the curriculum well enough.

Can any of you give me an idea of a magazine that I could order for my class that would be a good supplement?

Do any of you know about "National Geographic for Kids" or "Discovery Science?"

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

deNC

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Either will do, but a magazine is not going to do what you want it to do.

What will work better?

Go back and look hard at the standards (although I wouldn't spend an enormous amount of time on them, because after this coming school year the standards are going to change up quite a bit)...there are 4 curriculum areas you need to cover in depth this y...See Morea magazine is not going to do what you want it to do.

What will work better?

Go back and look hard at the standards (although I wouldn't spend an enormous amount of time on them, because after this coming school year the standards are going to change up quite a bit)...there are 4 curriculum areas you need to cover in depth this year.

Then look at your kits,compare the two. Find those areas where the kits aren't filling the bill and create supplemental lessons to cover those missing and weak areas. Use the internet, google up your topics. Drop at least half of the kit activities, weed out the ones that don't directly have a rigorous connection to a standard/substandard. This is one of the main problems with teaching from kits...they may cover the general area of the standards, but they don't teach what is tested in the DEPTH required for students to do well on the EOG.

Work really hard to beef up the student's vocab. knowledge in all 4 areas. Make sure they can use it and read it.

The 5th grade science EOG is a test of student ability to APPLY content knowledge in the 4 areas. In other words, they must throughly know the content--the facts involved in each standard and substandard in each content area--in order to apply that knowledge to the questions they are asked. Kit activities, though somewhat scientific in nature, do not lend themselves to learning the content that will be tested.

Old fashioned teaching: here is the new vocab. needed in this lesson, here is the information, now we will discuss, now we take notes, now we will answer questions on our study guide, then finally... maybe...we'll do an activity/lab related to the concept...quiz next Friday on the vocab., quiz next Wed. on the info covered so far, test on lessons 1-5 in this unit on whenever date, final unit test on blah, blah date ...this kind of teaching will improve the students fund of background knowledge and subsequently, their EOG scores.

Don't forget, the science EOG is also a "reading test" --if they can't read it, they aren't going to do well.

And yeah, I know we are told we shouldn't teach science this way anymore...but one of the major tenents of teaching pedagogy is that your lesson/s and the assessment/s must be congruent (taught and assessed in the same manner). Until the structure of the science EOG test changes, your teaching must be congruent with the assessment and since we can't change the structure of the assessment, all we can do is change the way we teach if you want the students to do well on the EOG.

Kits don't lend themselves to this.

(Disclaimer: no need for anyone to get all "wrung up" about what I've written...I've just posted what I figured out some years back when we first started testing science. My students now consistently score in the 90 % and up on the science EOG. Do I like teaching this way? Not necessarily but admin wants test scores.)

On 6/23/11, deNC wrote: > This will be my second year teaching fifth grade science in > NC. Last year, I felt that I was finding my way. We do > not have text and our kits do not hit the curriculum well > enough. > > Can any of you give me an idea of a magazine that I could > order for my class that would be a good supplement? > > Do any of you know about "National Geographic for Kids" > or "Discovery Science?" > > Any help will be greatly appreciated. > > deNC

Jun 23, 2011

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