OK, I'll be honest, I haven't been overly impressed with Discovery Ed this year. It has a lot of good information, but the organization is lacking and you really have to sort through a lot of bad stuff or inappropriate things to find the good things. Well this week my class did a science sleuths "lab." The way the science sleuths works is that there is a whole interactive science lab. The students are presented with a problem. Even with this problem it is not specifically written so the student has to determine the problem. At this point the student can watch videos(interviews), do testing, or research with articles, dictionaries, or an encyclopedia. Their goal is to solve the problem and one of the best things is that not all the information will lead them towards the answer. It's the best real-world type science simulation I've seen. The kids really have to do some critical thinking, and since I had them work in pairs, they had to do some collaboration. I believe these are called 21st century skills! Sure some of the students were a little frustrated at times, and they did find it challenging, but overall I would say that when I polled the kids they really liked this activity.
Now if any science folk out there are interested in using this,(Kendy), there are some problems. The one we did was the frog files, as there are many science sleuths. The save function doesn't seem to work well so the kids sort of have to start over each day. I'd recommend having them take notes on a google doc because of this. I've made one for the frog files that I like and would share if you'd like to use it. I also don't like the way they conclude the experiment with certain questions. I included my own conclusion in my google doc.
Its always nice to find something good. Now I need to do that searching through more of these science sleuths to find some more to use this year.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to read your thoughts about the Discovery Science materials. I've been learning how to use them...mostly so I can support teachers. I've found the website to be so vast, so I look forward to looking into the Science Sleuth labs.
You mentioned sharing your Google Doc. Do you know how to turn a document into a template? Then anyone in the district can find it using the template tool in Drive. I'd like to see if it's something the Euclid teachers can make use of.
I like how you're modifying the resources to make them your own!
Sue
Chris - way to push your students' thinking, and to teach persistence.
ReplyDeleteChris~
ReplyDeleteAs always, I find your insights so impressive. I appreciate your insight on the "Science Sleuths". I think that this is one of the highlights (even with its issues) of Discovery Education. I am so impressed how you are taking the resources and using your good teacher skills to create something quality for your kids.
You are still my hero!
We are looking at the Techbook for middle school at Littleton Academy. I have mixed feelings as well. Less depth in some areas but current scientific content in others. Students struggle finding the important information in the reading passages since they are set up like the texts.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think we adopted the Techbook without enough people actually piloting it and most of us are finding the same problems in that it has some great resources, but it takes a lot of time to find them.
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