Video Transcript

Hi Science Teachers,

Welcome to Science Teacher Summer School, Episode 9

I’m Kent Lui, and something you may not know about me is that I joined a meetup group called the Vancouver Tallperson’s club back when I was young and single. I just met the minimum height at the time of 6 feet 2 inches – which would have made me, the first time in my life, the shortest person in the room. Now, let’s get to work.

Here’s an age old question: What do we teach? Your initial answer may be “I teach science.” Or, “I teach Chemistry 11” or whatever your timetable is during the year. Here’s a quick shout out to Mark McNeilly, retired math teacher, who told me, “Kent, we teach kids.”

Because everything is now on the internet, it’s not so much science content that is the focus of our teaching these days. The focus is on teaching skills – like processing and analyzing data, communicating findings, evaluating bias, and planning and conducting experiments.

But science teachers love the content. And I get it. I love the content too. I love balancing chemical equations and writing chemical symbols for chemical names. I love drawing free body diagrams and the stages of mitosis. I enjoy decoding the mysteries of the Doppler effect and red shift. But, we are supposed to teach skills in areas of science that can be content heavy.

So, how can skills be taught efficiently in areas of science that are fact heavy – like lab safety?

We need to consider what content is essential to teach and what we want students to be able to do with that content. For example, we all teach a small unit on lab safety. But, how do we teach it to highlight science skills? Typically, we talk about lab safety in class, maybe give a short assignment or demo, and then a short quiz where students regurgitate some safety facts. However, is that how we want students to view lab safety – simply a list of rules and something to check off a list? When I teach lab safety, I take a few minutes to summarize the most important points. Then, I have students do a lab where they brew coffee. It’s a simple lab where they use lab equipment to brew coffee. But, the point is that they gain experience doing a lab safely. At the end, I ask them what they felt were the most important safety rules pertaining to the lab. For their lab safety quiz, I give them a table with industry data that shows what injuries are most common in the workplace. And, I ask 1 question: Analyze the injury data and state what you think is the most important safety rule in the workplace? Students are expected to construct their argument using CER.

So, in teaching lab safety, I have students not only practice lab safety skills but also skills like argumentation and analysis. What I’ve found is that content heavy areas of science are really good areas at getting students to practice skills like argumentation, evaluating models and analogies, and forming connections between ideas. For example, for my science 10 quiz on evolution, I give students an illustrated timeline of horse evolution and I ask one question: is horse evolution an example of punctuated equilibrium or gradualism? Please analyze the timeline and write an argument using CER.

To get started teaching science skills through our curricular content, consider the following questions:

1. What are the essential pieces of content and skill you want students to know?
2. How can I evaluate this effectively and, if possible, creatively? The creative part is important because it allows for us to think of fun ways for students to practice and demonstrate these skills. And,
3. How will I know when a student gets it? This question helps me determine what an A would look like in my class.

That’s all the time we have for this episode. Please leave questions in the comments section below. Join me next time, when I’ll be sharing how I come up with the 4-point scales on my rubrics. You don’t want to miss it.

Thanks for watching. And, remember to science everywhere everyday.

Resources

Handout(s): 01 – Coffee Lab

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