Initial Publication Date: January 18, 2016
Kathryn Baldwin: Using Soils and Society at Eastern Washington University
About this Course
An introductory methods course intended for preservice K–8 teachers.
22
students
Two 130-minute sessions
weekly
Lab setting
Regional Comprehensive
university
Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 237kB Aug25 15)
This is an introductory science and social studies methods course intended for pre-service K–8 teachers. Pre-service teachers typically take this course mid-way through the teacher preparation program at EWU. This course is designed to introduce pre-service K–8 teachers to methods and materials for teaching science and social studies in elementary and middle school.
Course Goals:
The following are the course objectives:
- Create standards-based science and social studies lessons that promote real-world problem solving strategies, integrate knowledge and skills from science, social studies, English language arts, and/or mathematics, and reflect best practices in instruction and assessment.
- Compare and contrast instructional methods in science and social studies that meet the needs of diverse learners.
- Explain the importance and challenge of preparing students to be respectful citizens in a complex world.
- Employ reflective practices to refine instruction in science and social studies according to assessment results, current research, and student needs.
- Exhibit professionalism associated with the high standards of the teaching profession.
Course Content
The 10-week, 5-credit course is designed to prepare undergraduate elementary education majors to teach science and social studies in the elementary classroom. The class is an integrated science and social studies methods course. The course combines the four Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) of the NGSS—physical science, Earth and space science, life science, and engineering—with the four domains of social studies: civics, geography, economics, and history. In addition, the Science and Engineering Practices and Cross-Cutting Concepts of the NGSS are compared to the social studies skills of the state standards. This module is an example of how the course integrates science and social studies into a cohesive unit.
A Success Story in Building Student Engagement
This module was taught in a combined science and social studies methods course for future elementary and middle school teachers. This module really helps to model what we want our students to do in this class—create an interdisciplinary lesson that integrates subject matter typically taught in isolation. Not only were students able to align their Kits with multiple areas of science, they also aligned them with state social studies standards in history, geography, civics, and economics. It was evident in the Kits that the students were able to see the impacts of science on our society on both local and global scales of perspective.
My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials
I like how the module makes science relevant by looking at the impacts soil has on society. The students take something that is everywhere—soil—and come up with so many different societal issues/impacts for building their Kits.
Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course
The course where I implemented this module is a combined science and social studies methods course that meets twice a week (130 minutes each) for 10 weeks. This module took about 5 class periods for the students to complete with one in-class "work day" to complete their Kits. After careful consideration and discussion with other authors, I decided to implement the module during the last three weeks of the course. I think that the Kit lends itself to a final project and I like having the Kit as the final assessment for the course. This placement at the course end also allowed me time to talk about many methods (inquiry, misconceptions, lesson planning, assessment, etc.) that not only make this module successful but apply to science teaching in general. This provided pre-service teachers the scaffolding needed to create a cohesive, authentic and meaningful unit for their own K–8 students.
Unit 1
- We started Unit 1 on the first day of five class periods.
- We did all of the initial discussion on science relevancy.
- The Soils Issues Homework was done in class. A discussion was added to Unit 1 for the Soils Issues Homework.
- The final assessment (the Kit) description and rubric were handed out and discussed at the end of the class session.
- We did not do the concept mapping activity. This Unit 1 activity was added after the pilot to provide metacognitive support that links each of the units together.
Unit 2
- We started Unit 2 on the second day of five class periods.
- Since we had an entire class period to devote to the mapping patterns activity, the pre-service teachers worked in small groups (2–3) and looked at all four maps. This differs from the format listed where each group takes one map, and then they jigsaw the results. If you have time, I would suggest this as I think that looking through all the maps helped them to see relationships between the data from each map. I have only taught the module using this method.
- Pre-service teachers were given a brief description of the stations in Unit 3 and then asked to think about what sorts of soil characterization stations would help them to answer their questions related to their soils issue for their Kits.
- We did everything in Unit 2 except revisiting the concept maps.
Unit 3
- We started Unit 3 on the third day of five class periods.
- All stations were set up around the classroom. Most students were about to complete at least four stations in a 2-hour and 10-minute class session.
- I went around the room and checked in with pre-service teachers about their Kit ideas and how the stations related to their Kit issue and questions. I also asked about how this same activity might vary for their intended grade level and how it might be more or less structured depending on the class.
- We did everything in Unit 3 except revisiting the concept maps.
Unit 4
- We started Unit 4 on the fifth day of five class periods.
- Pre-service teachers had the fourth day to use as in class work time to prepare their Kits.
- Pre-service teachers presented their Kits in a gallery walk style presentation.
- Since we are a state that has adopted the NGSS, all lesson plans had to be aligned with NGSS.
- As we had already graded multiple lesson plans in a format for our state, the lesson plans for the Kit could be in any format of their choosing. The lesson plans were not scored separately, only within the context of the Kit rubric.
- This was followed by a final discussion and overall reflection of the Kits.
- We did not do the concept mapping activity.
Assessments
The Soils Issues Homework was formatively assessed during the class discussion. Additional formative assessments, such as questioning and providing feedback, were used in Units 1–3. The Kit guidelines and rubric, the summative assessment, were given to students on the first day of the unit, and the guidelines and rubric were revisited at the end of each unit in the module until the students turned in the Kits on the final day of the module.
Outcomes
Overall, the Kits presented by the pre-service teachers met the goals of the module. Pre-service teachers demonstrated the ability of taking a science issue and developing an entire unit around the issue. Pre-service teachers were able to show the influence of soil issues on society through their selection of lesson activities, lesson objectives, reflection, and lessons aligned to both the NGSS and the state social studies standards. Although the module is written for a science methods course, instructors may want to collaborate with the social studies methods course instructor regarding this module.
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