Analyzing Middle School Science
Your middle schooler is already a budding scientist. She has a natural curiosity about the world, how it works, and why things are the way they are. If she gets encouragement and support, science can awaken her imagination, whether she's engaged in a discussion about global warming, learning how to grow a healthy garden or pondering a career as a geneticist.
But the performance of U.S. students on science tests has lagged at the time that scientific literacy is needed more than ever before. The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) shows eighth-grade students' science scores stagnating on a national average, and declining by twelfth grade. The need to improve student achievement in science is taking on new urgency because 2007 is the first year the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires students to be tested in the subject.
Tapping the Scientific Community
The scientific community wants to help - check out your local scientific society, research institute or even your local television channel's meteorologist. They may all have ideas or avenues to explore when it comes to bridging the gap between science and student.
Two examples of this kind of community interaction are the Argonne National Laboratory Science Career series, which has programs in Chicago as well as national projects, and the University of California, San Francisco Science Education Project, which is a good example of a University/School District partnership.
Looking locally? The National Society of Professional Engineers has an interactive map where you can search for educational opportunities in your area.
Sites like those offered through the Lawrence Hall of Science at University of California, Berkeley and the Exploratorium in San Francisco both offer activities, lessons and resources for science.
Parents can help their children prepare for science in high school and beyond by asking their school principals and teachers about the way science is taught, encouraging their children's scientific curiosity at home and looking for opportunities to engage budding scientists in after-school or summer programs.
What Does Good Science Instruction Look Like?
An international video study of eighth-grade science teaching practices in the United States found key differences between the United States and nations that performed better on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study test (TIMSS) in 1999.
The good news: U.S. students are engaged in a variety of science activities - hands-on, class discussion and independent reading and writing.
The bad: These activities are not closely linked to larger science ideas, and content is "typically organized as discrete bits of factual information."
The study found that lessons in Australia and Japan, for example, focused on a small number of core ideas and engaged students in hands-on activities to explore and reinforce those ideas. In the United States, by contrast, students worked on activities designed to be fun and engaging, but the activities weren't linked to specific science ideas. In one lesson described in the report, an eighth-grade science teacher spent 10 minutes talking about a field trip, collecting permission slips, reading over an assignment related to the trip and talking about the schedule for students to launch rockets they were building. Then students got out their rockets, their directions for building them and worked individually on them for 25 minutes, consulting with the teacher and classmates for help. There was no mention of a science idea or any discussion about the rocket project.
