How do you introduce CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to your students? Fact is, there are many ways, and they all depend on personal teaching styles. Some use class discussion questions to as a CER intro activity to help students develop and support some fun claims. Some use quirky science examples to illustrate CER in real,…
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Are you looking for an activity for students to practice identifying independent and dependent variables? Most independent and dependent variables practice activities tend to provide a statement and have students identify the independent and dependent variables. A typical practice question goes like this: The problem with Typical Questions Typical practice questions are fine if you…
What’s one thing science students should be able to do in grade 8 and 9? I think they should be able to identify and differentiate between independent and dependent variables. However, many gr 8 and 9 science students struggle with this skill. Results from REAL Science Challenge contests show that over 40% of contest writers…
Are you constantly looking for interesting, fun, and relevant ways to practice graph analysis and other science skills? Typically, we have students graph lab data or analyze charts from the textbook or lab manual. Although these strategies are solid ways to practice graph analysis or production, both are missing the “fun factor.” Also, textbooks and…
Imagine looking at your watch but not knowing how to read the time. Or, looking at a newspaper headline but not understanding what it’s saying. Both are important skills to help you function in the everyday. Without either one, doing everyday work gets a little harder. Knowing how to read a graph in science class…
Do your students have trouble coming up with conclusions to a lab experiment? It may be because your students struggle to interpret graphs.. Results from REAL Science Challenge Vol 2 Contest 1 support this claim. According to test results, about 40% of grade 8 and 9 students cannot correctly draw a conclusion from a graph…
How do I mark CER (Claim Evidence Reasoning) statements? That’s probably a big question you have if you currently use or plan to use CER in your classroom. Other questions may include, ‘Is there a CER rubric?” and “If so, what are some good CER rubrics?” The short answer is that, yes, there is a…
Do you know about the Four Stages of Competence? One of its claims is that getting better at a skill (to go from “conscious” to “unconscious competence”) requires practice. Of course, this is nothing new. To get better at sports, reading, writing, or arithmetic requires practice to hone the craft. Using CER – Claim, Evidence,…
After teaching for 13 years, this year, I finally need to write a unit plan (it’s been a while!). Of course, it is possible not to write a unit plan at all. Some may ask, “why don’t you just follow the textbook?” Or, “why don’t you just buy something off teachers-pay-teachers dot com instead of…
Teaching arts and sciences together can make science more applicable and exciting. That is one of the suggestions in the article My Wish List for University Science Education published on Medium.com. At its core, the article suggests ways in which we can alter university science education to make it reach more learners, to show more…
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