TPCK - science

As a Title I teacher, I have recently been asked to support students in science as well as in math and reading. With limited time and resources, I have begun to rely on the web to help students understand and identify with science topics relevant to their world.

With a need to make my teaching of science real and relatively simple, I developed an 'I wonder' component to my reading lessons. As we read non-fiction texts, students would always ask questions about the topic at hand that the author did not choose to discuss. To allow for students to explore their own 'wonderings', I made up some science forms. Students would complete the form, recording their 'I wonder' question. At some point during the week, we would take time to search for their answers on the web. The responses were recorded in their science journals after their research was complete. Simple, yet very powerful...

I used You Tube for the first time with my students last week! We were reading about the survival needs of plants. We read about plants finding nutrients in the soil and sunlight (these were 2nd graders). I asked if anyone had ever seen a Venus Fly Trap and we talked about it being a carnivorous plant. We were able to head to the compute lab at that very moment (had to impose upon a class that was at the desk tops...), and watched videos of the plants eating spiders, bugs and even a frog! The kids were fascinated and even thought of a couple of 'I wonder' questions as a result - How does a Venus Fly Trap get nutrients from its prey? How does it digest it?