August is a wonderful time to go out at night and look at the stars. This week is particularly wonderful because it is the annual Perseid meteor in the Northern Hemisphere. It should be at its best between August 11-13th this year.
So, if you have a chance in the next couple of nights - please go find a very dark place to look up at the night sky. If I could be anywhere in the world tonight it would be in the high desert of Eastern Oregon. But, anywhere that has a dark, clear night sky will do and you need to find somewhere comfortable to lie down so you can see most of the sky….
And, if you want to shift your perspective for a short while on our place in the universe - take a moment to read this recent blog post by Adam Frank on the NPR blog 13.7 cosmos and culture.
Duck and ducklings swimming in the peace pond - Bristol UK
Here is a short list - just three books - to consider reading this summer if you are someone who is fascinated by natural history.
While summer is a good time of year to get out and investigate nature and explore new places, it is important to remember to bring some good books along. They make the best companions when you have a chance settle into a hammock or comfy chair in a shady place with a cool drink and a few hours of free time. And, these books seem well suited for taking us off on adventures, not only in natural history but in time travel as well. So, I have all three packed in my bag for a week at the seashore in Wales. They were also all three recommended by at least one friend so I while I haven't read them (yet) I feel confident passing on this suggestions......
Read the review by Clare Clark in the Guardian here
The Coral Thiefby Rebecca Stott
Book Description: "Paris, 1815. Napoleon has just surrendered at Waterloo and is due to begin his exile. Meanwhile, Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, has just arrived in Paris to study anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes - only to realise that his letters of introduction and a gift of precious coral specimens, on which his tenure depends, have been stolen by the beautiful woman with whom he shared a stagecoach.
In the fervour and tumult of post revolutionary Paris, nothing is quite as it seems. In trying to recover his lost valuables, Daniel discovers that his beautiful adversary is in fact a philosopher-thief who lives in a shadowy world of outlaws and émigrés. As Daniel embark on a passionate love affair with the Coral Thief, he is drawn to join her salon of thieves to execute one last breathtakingly bold robbery" from Amazon
Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolutionby Richard Fortey
‘In Richard Fortey’s capable hands the humble grey trilobite has been transformed into the E.T. of the Lower Palaeozoic – a remarkable and fascinating book.’ SIMON WINCHESTER
Book Description: "Richard Fortey is one of Britain’s leading popular scientists. Life: An Unauthorised Biography, was short-listed for the Rhone Poulenc prize and has been reprinted five times. In all he writes, Fortey displays extraordinary range, delight and descriptive gifts which make complicated scientific facts and concepts not only easy to understand but a delight to absorb.
Trilobite! is an unashamedly trilobito-centric view of the world unravelling the history of the exotic, crustacean-like animals which dominated the seas for three hundred million years. These arthropods witnessed continents move, mountain chains elevated and eroded; they survived ice ages and volcanic eruptions, evolving and adapting exquisitely to their environment. They watched through their crystal eyes whilst life evolved. Their own evolution calibrated geological time itself.
Structured like a detective story, this is a light, but highly informative account of the wonders of scientific discovery and an engaging, quirky and fascinating introduction to evolution." from Amazon
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
"the conventions shaken by these women, simply by who they are and what they are interested in, are the even more rigid ones of class and gender. Giant marine reptiles are not the only remarkable creatures in this book." - Ruth Padel in her review in the Guardian (read the full review here)
Book Description:"In the early nineteenth century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye…
From the moment she’s struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is different. Her discovery of strange fossilized creatures in the cliffs of Lyme Regis sets the world alight. But Mary must face powerful prejudice from a male scientific establishment, not to mention vicious gossip and the heartbreak of forbidden love.
Then – in prickly, clever Elizabeth Philpot, a fossil-obsessed middle-class spinster – she finds a champion, and a rival. Despite their differences in class and age, Mary and Elizabeth’s loyalty and passion for the truth must win out.
Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman’s gift transcends class and gender to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, it is a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship." from Amazon
As we wrap up the school year I would like to post two slideshows. The first one is from our Grade 4 field trips to Regents Park to observe and photograph the water birds. The second is from six months of weather readings by the Grade 3 students. At the end of the week - on Fridays - I have been taking a picture of the group that were meteorologists for that week. The whole series of pictures put together shows the change in seasons and light levels as we move through the year.
But, there is another reason I am posting both of these slideshows at the moment. I made these for my dear friend Stephanie Heynderickx. Stephanie has been working with the students in grades 3 and 4 for the last few years and she has been instrumental in developing both the water bird field trip and the morning weather readings. For this last year, I have looked forward to her smiling face each morning as we go outside to get the weather readings.
During spring break, Stephanie had a serious accident on her bike and she is going to have a long recovery. So, while she couldn't be with us - we have been thinking of her everyday - and we wanted her to be able to share in our end of year celebration. Therefore - these slideshows are for her.
With all the sad news on the world stage at the moment -it was wonderful to be reading through the New York Times articles and find this post about what a five year old can do with an iPhone when left to her own devices…..
In our grade 4 science classes during March and April we have been learning about animal adaptations. Also, today I am in Stockholm helping to teach a class at the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet Natural History Museum for a group of my husband's high school students in their marine biology program. And, here too we are looking at adaptations.
Bear statue at the entrance of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm
One example skull that I am going to show them during our tour is an hyena's skull because it is such a great example of the adaptations of the mouth of a mammalian predator for capturing and eating its prey.
British Museum of Natural History
Any adaptations that help animals to eat their food are usually interesting to kids. Looking closely at the skulls and teeth of hyenas, alligators or wolves have particularly fascinating. (After all, they look like they might be able to eat us!) When we are making observations of skulls and teeth we sometimes talk about how the teeth on a mammal are like a tool kit. Humans can use their hands and tools such as knives and forks to get their food. But, to be able to survive animals have to be capture and then break up their food into reasonable bite sizes. Predator's teeth are often important for both catching prey and then also to able to get through the hard outer coating to get to the good stuff inside.
There is a completely different group of animals also has a specialized tool kit for getting their food but their tools are all modified appendages. This means that instead of lots of teeth (which they don't have) they have lots of legs. I am thinking of the crustaceans who are called decapods because they have 10 legs. Of the five pairs fo legs there are many possible functions from walking to digging to climbing but the front pair of legs are usually modified into large claws. Among the crabs, shrimp, crayfish and lobsters there is a wild array of modifications to the front claws which have all kinds of advantages for defense, signally to other crabs as well as capturing or stunning and holding food. Or even to stay cool!
All this discussion of adaptations of crustaceans is really just my excuse for featuring the lastest blog post from Robert Krulwich of RadioLab fame. Earlier this year RadioLab (one of my favorite podcasts) aired an entire episode on color (Link to Episode on Color here). Which brings me back to the topic of crustaceans because there is yet another amazing adaptation of these crazy looking creatures. It seems that one group of crustaceans, called mantis shrimp- can see a much wider array of the light spectrum than we can. Whereas we have three different color cones in our eyes mantis shrimp have 16 different kinds of color receptors in their eyes.
To give us a small sense of how much more information there might be in being able to see such a wide range of colors the RadioLab team enlisted a choir to sing the range of frequencies that we can hear as a kind of auditory translation of the rainbow. And then, since we humans are such visual creatures the RadioLab crew were nice enough to also post a video about working with the choir in making this episode- and check out near the end their version of Handel's Messiah - rewritten to fit for the Mantis Shrimp. -Hallelujah Mantis Shrimp
And THEN - this great RadioLab program on color and the many colors a mantis shrimp can see inspired a artist/cartoonist/storyteller named Matthew Inman to create "an ode to an animal that he freely admits isn't charming, isn't nice, isn't gentle, isn't even good — which is why it melts his heart."
Part 1) Here is the link to his blog -Krulwich Wonders Blog
Part 2) If you haven't already gone directly to the cartoon from the Oatmeal mentioned in Krulwich Wonders post - then click on the link below and you will then want to share it with all the Gr 3-4 students that you know....I think this might have been written with 8-10 year olds in mind.....Here is the link to the cartoon that you must read-
But there is MORE!
Let me direct you now to a research team at the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology run by
This group found some more interesting information about their vision. Here is a short list of some of their findings:Stomatopod eyes are unusual for several reasons:
they have stereo vision with just one eye;
each eye is up on a stalk, with a wide range of motion;
stomatopods have up to 16 visual pigments (in contrast, we humans have three—red, blue, and yellow);
stomatopods can also see ultra-violet and infra-red light, and some can even see polarized light
The eyes of a mantis shrimp
Can you believe that? They not only see many more colors than we do - some of them have polarizing filters on their eyes!
"Researchers….have just recently demonstrated that they had polarizing filters in their eyes……The images in the animation above were taken using a polarizing filter—we wouldn’t see the flashing red and white signals with only the naked eye. Based on his observations, Dr. Caldwell thinks that these stomatopods may use patterns visible only with polarized filters for communication."
Click here to watch the short video that illustrates how the mantis shrimp can signal each other. But, only an animal with polarizing lens would be able to see these signals. So, it would be like have a secret code that none of the other members of underwater ecosystem would be able to see.
In most stomatopod groups, after mating with a male, the female stomatopod lays eggs in her burrow. However, in one group ofspearers, the males and females are monogamous (meaning they stay together and share a burrow)…..The male and female live in the same burrow, but have different “jobs”—the female takes care of the eggs and the male hunts for food for both of them! Note that the male in the image at right has much larger eyes and raptorial appendages."
So clearly both the excellent eyesight and the large front claws are related adaptations for hunting for food. Which makes one wonder - which came first - the amazing eyesight or the killer front claws?
Example of a modern mantis shrimp, Odontodactylus scyallarus. It is well known for using heavily calcified clubs as weapons. Natural History Museum.
The Museum of Natural History has a short posting on its website that says "the description of new material means that our understanding of the evolution of proto-mantis shrimp is in flux. Several fossil localities from the Carboniferous in Europe and North America have yielded particularly important material that has shaped our understanding of the diversity of the group….
One of the most interesting topics the fossils shed light on is the evolution of the pair of specialised ballistic claws that modern mantis shrimp use to catch their prey. It turns out that this specialisation had already developed in some archaeostomatopods of the Carboniferous."
Which is using a lot of long words to say - we have found some very interesting fossils that date back 300 million years and they show that those raptorial front claws were already developed by then. So, there were mantis shrimp clubbing their prey even back in the Carboniferous seas. But, that says nothing about the amazing eyes. What it does tell us is that this adaptation has stood the test of evolutionary time. They work well!
So, what do Mantis Shrimp and Hyenas have in common? A cool tool kit of adaptations for survival.
Someday I will write a whole post on this blog dedicated to hyenas but for now I have to leave to it here - so here are a few Hyena links that might be of interest -
What could be more fun than designing your own flavor of soda? Following on the lessons in Designing Mixtures in which children read about the scientists that design the flavors of jellybeans they have a chance to design their own flavors of soda. This is a great example of a set of lessons for 7 year old children that teach the design process in addition to the core science concepts. (Can you tell that I am still focused on teaching the design process ?)
Here are some of the key questions that I have for science lessons: Is it engaging to students?
Anyone who has worked with children knows that design challenges for kids should be fun.... and over the years I have seen a number of fun design challenges:
• design a circuit that will light up three light bulbs at once
• design a container that will protect an egg from being dropped off the roof
• design a tower built of newspaper that will support a weight
• design a bridge that is built from cardboard that will support toy cars as they cross a distance.
Is it authentic to science and engineering practices?
While many of these lesson are lots of fun and very engaging- most of these challenges are one time events. While it may keep everyone busy for days before hand at some point there will be great show of demonstrating the results - dropping egg containers off the roof - driving toy cars across the paper bridges and so forth.
During this process most kids are totally engaged. They have a great time and have a chance to try out some new ideas. But there are usually some children that are just totally lost through out whole unit. They just don't understand the challenge and have no idea how to be successful at accomplishing the task. Sometimes they end up being the creative, decorative member of their team - using colored lights, or creating cool designs for the outside of the container or the tower. But, somehow they miss the central point and never have a chance to work through the cycle of generating ideas, testing them out and then trying other alternatives.
And even the children that are very successful - those ones that do understand what they are tasked with accomplishing - these children are often the first ones engaged in creating a solution. They often jump at the first idea that strikes them and then proceed to spend the available time just trying to get it to work.
But, the actual design process in science or engineering doesn't work that way. It is a systematic process.
So what does an authentic design process look like for a seven year old child?
In the Designing Mixtures unit the Grade 2 students are given fun challenges but they are guided through the design process so that they have the opportunities to work through their investigations and creations in a systematic way. There are two main design challenges during the unit, one is to design a good glue and the other is to design a new flavor of soda. In both challenges they have opportunities to develop a foundational knowledge about the properties of the materials that they might be working with and to go through more than one cycle of creating a mixture and testing it to see if it fits with the key properties that are needed.
"Because students are engaging in the challenge of designing specific mixtures (as distinct from designing a care, a computer, or some other technological product that one builds) their design work naturally always involves mixing ingredients together. Common steps in this design process that will emerge are identifying the desired properties, testing ingredients, mixing them together, testing the mixture, possibly revising, and communicating results.
Important Steps in designing mixtures include:
1. Decide on the properties you want your new mixture to have.
2. Think of possible ingredients to make the mixture.
3. Test the possible ingredients to find out their properties.
4. Mix ingredients together to make a mixture with more than one property.
5. Compare the result to the list of properties to see if you mixture meets your goals.
6. Try again if the properties are not close enough.
7. Record a recipe that describes how to make the mixture." From Teacher's Guide for Designing Mixtures
3. Is there a clear conceptual progression inherent in the practices and the sequence of the lessons in the unit?
Here is an example of the conceptual progression for the Designing Mixtures unit. This is the conceptual progression for the Design Process.
In the video below I have added another lesson from the Designing Mixtures unit. (Note :please forgive the jumpy video shots - these are were recorded on the fly when there was a quick opportunity to get some footage.)
In this lesson the students have already tested their substances and evaluated them for taste and have designed their own soda recipe. In this lesson they are going to be making the recipe created by their partner and their partner will be making their soda recipe.
As I write this I am watching lovely white flakes of snow wafting past the window. I am currently in Stockholm where there is still a covering of snow on the ground and kids are still skating on parts of the frozen Baltic. Here is the scene yesterday outside of the Natural History Museum.
This is not how I expected to spend my second week of spring break - I was expecting at least some early spring flowers! But, perhaps this is a karmic payback of sorts.
I have been so busy that I haven't had time to put up the science lessons and some videos that I made in February and March.
So, in an effort to move things forward on many fronts and to do my small part to end the winter weather in Northern Europe
I am going to finally finish writing up our recent science projects and I will post a few different videos this next week. Bring on the daffodils!
I am going to share some of the lessons from the Designing Mixtures (Seeds of Science) unit which we just finished in the Grade 2 classes.
This winter I was able to use a flip camera to get some video of some of the lessons to give you a peek into some of these lessons in action. This is a physical science unit that introduces seven and eight year old students to important concepts such as the properties of substances, mixtures, and dissolving. But, for now I would like to focus on another important part of the unit in which students learn about the design process - which is an important part of both science and engineering practices. As the teacher's guide for Designing Mixtures says "Scientific inquiry aims to study nature, while technological design proposes solutions to human needs. Both involve open-ended discovery and use ideas creatively to explore the physical world. Both engineers and scientists engage in the design process. The process of inquiry and the process of design share many characteristics and interact with each other in rich and revealing ways."
These new science standards were developed initially by the National Research Council and are now going through the final modifications after a couple of rounds of extensive public comment. When they are released they will represent the new framework for national science standards in the United States. While there are several new aspects to these new standards one of the key features is the more prominent role of engineering and technological design practices.
"What is different in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is a commitment to fully integrate engineering design, technology, and mathematics into the structure of science education by raising engineering design to the same level as scientific inquiry when teaching science disciplines at all levels, from kindergarten to grade 12. This new integrated approach to science education is sometimes referred to by the acronym STEM."
"It is important to add at the outset, however, that including core concepts related to engineering design and technology does not imply that schools are expected to develop separate courses in these subjects. It is essential that these concepts are closely integrated with study in science disciplines at all grade levels.....
From an inspirational standpoint the Framework emphasizes the importance of technology and engineering in solving meaningful problems. From a practical standpoint the Framework notes that engineering and technology provide opportunities for students to deepen their understanding of science by applying their developing scientific knowledge in real-world contexts. Both arguments converge on the powerful idea that by integrating technology and engineering design into science curriculum, teachers can enable their students to use what they learn in their everyday lives."
"Core Idea 1. Engineering Design
The term “engineering design” has replaced the older term “technological design,” consistent with the definition of engineering as a systematic practice for solving problems, and technology as the result of that practice. According to the Framework: “ From a teaching and learning point of view, it is the iterative cycle of design that offers the greatest potential for applying science knowledge in the classroom and engaging in engineering practices,” (NRC 2011, p. 8-1). This idea contrasts with a common practice challenging children to build a tower out of newspaper with no guidance for how to go about solving the problem. Instead, the Framework recommends that students learn about three phases of solving problems:
A. Defining and delimiting engineering problems involves stating the problem to be solved as clearly as possible in terms of criteria for success and constraints, or limits. B. Designing solutions to engineering problems begins with generating a number of different possible solutions, evaluating potential solutions to see which ones best meet the criteria and constraints of the problem, then testing and revising the best designs. C. Optimizing the design solution involves a process in which the final design is improved by trading off less important features for those that are more important. This may require a number of tests and improvements before arriving at the best possible design. The Framework is explicit about what students at different grade levels are expected to do in engineering design. This progression of capabilities is summarized in the Framework as follows:
In some ways, children are natural engineers. They spontaneously build sand castles, dollhouses, and hamster enclosures, and they use a variety of tools and materials for their own playful purposes. Thus a common elementary school activity is to challenge children to use tools and materials provided in class to solve a specific challenge, such as constructing a bridge from paper and tape and testing it until failure occurs. Children’s capabilities to design structures can then be enhanced by having them pay attention to points of failure and asking them to create and test redesigns of the bridge so that it is stronger. Furthermore, design activities should not be limited just to structural engineering but should also include projects that reflect other areas of engineering, such as the need to design a traffic pattern for the school parking lot or a layout for planting a school garden box (NRC 2012, p 70-71)."
"What distinguishes engineering design in the NGSS from earlier attempts to engage students with fun, hands-on activities like packaging eggs so they can be dropped without breaking, or building bridges or catapults, is that students learn to solve problems systematically. For example, it is common for both children and adults to jump at the first solution that comes to mind when solving a motivating problem. Students who approach problems using the practices of engineering design take the time to clearly define the problem that they are expected to solve, and specify the criteria for success so they will be able to judge the quality of their solutions. They also generate a number of different solutions before deciding what to test, and compare each of their initial ideas with the requirements of the problem. And once they find a workable solution they are not done. They also recognize that further tests and modifications are necessary to develop optimal solution."
Roger W. Bybee begins his essay on Scientific and Engineering Practices in K-12 Classrooms, which is included in the booklet titled The NSTA Reader's Guide to A Framework for K-12 Science Education by describing some of the recent Sesame Street episodes which include the characters acting like engineers and scientists as a sign of the growing importance of STEM education practices through out US education. Here is a link to the Sesame Street website that explains more of the reasoning behing their new initiative. Sesame Street - STEM education
As Dr. Bybee says in his article " The relationship between science and engineering practices is one of complementarity. Given the inclusion of engineering in the science standards and an understanding of the difference in aims, the practices complement one another and should be mutually reinforcing in curricula and instruction. The shift in practice emerges from research on how students learn and advances our understanding of how science progresses."
So, it appears that we have arrived at a new perspective on engineering practices in K-12 science education standards for the US. Everyone from the experts in science education to the writers for Sesame Street seem to agree that it is important to include more engineering practices into K-12 science instruction. (Not all countries in the world agree with that idea - but more about that in a later post).
The next obvious question is HOW are we going to teach these engineering practices?
• What is this new kind of instruction that incorporates engineering practices into elementary science?
• What does the lesson in an elementary classroom using these practices look like?
• What do we ask our students to do?
• How do we make sure that students are successful right from the beginning and not frustrated and turned off by the design challenges presented?
Not surprisingly, I think that one possible example of just such a unit is the Designing Mixtures unit from Seeds of Science. While there are core concepts in physical science embedded in the unit involving properties of substances, mixtures and dissolving the practices of design are just as integral to the unit and not something that has been tacked on at the edges. It is just as much a part of the unit as the important discoveries that students make about the physical properties of the various substances they investigation. The students move through al the key steps outlined for the design process and as would be expected at the end of the unit they are done - in fact they have only just started to really understand how to generate workable solutions and how to evaluate and modify their designs.
Here how the Seeds of Science website describes what students learn during the unit:
"Design process: Students learn about ways in which scientists and engineers design new mixtures for specific purposes, using what they know about the properties of ingredients. They consider design goals- properties they want their mixture to have, test ingredients, decide on a mixture to test, make the mixture and record procedures, test the resulting mixture to see how well it matches the design goals, revise their recipes and continue testing. As students engage in the design process, they also learn important ideas about cause and effect." http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/units/dm#2
So, let me give you just one example from these lessons - this is a reading lesson using one of the five books that the students read as they move through their investigations during the unit. It is called Jelly
Bean Scientist - and I wish there were many more books like this written for children - not some dry text about a long dead scientist but books about current people doing cool science - and in a way that is written and illustrated for kids - at their reading level. Hopefully, someday soon there will be more.
So below you will find a short video that gives a shortened version of what a typical reading lesson looks like in our Grade 2 classrooms. I would suggest that there are two questions you might keep in mind when you watch the lesson
1. Is it engaging to students?
2. Is it authentic to science and engineering practices?
"Being a scientist is cool. Being a JELLY BEAN scientist is super cool! Ambrose Lee can attest to this. Ambrose is a food scientist who brainstorms flavor recipes for gourmet jelly beans at Jelly Belly Candy Co. His job is so cool it has been featured inPopular Science magazine. Check out theJelly Belly web siteto learn more about the variety of flavors including crazy ones like:
Pencil Shavings
Toothpaste
Moldy Cheese
Skunk Spray"
Link to Seeds of Science website posting on the book Jelly Bean scientist:
Earlier I posted the story about Paul Salopek's journey for National Geographic tracing one of the main paths of human migration across the globe. But, close on his heels appears to be a new form of tourism which is arising based on tracing human history in various
locations across the globe. All of this traveling is based in one way or another on the new information provided by the recent
discoveries from the human genome research. The
New York Times just published a story in their travel section about the influx
of tourists traveling to Leicester to visit the grave of Richard III. Royal Remains Draw the Curious to Leicester You
have probably seen the many news features in the last month about the way that
these bones were confirmed to be Richard III by comparing the DNA from the
bones with a living descendent of Richard III ‘s sister who is currently alive
and well and living in Canada.
Another
recent travel story featured Eddie Izzard traveling all over the globe. This was a two-part television story
presented by BBC. Celebrity travel
stories are not new – Michael Palin has been globetrotting and presenting
interesting television specials for over a decade. His most recent series was based on his
travels in Brazil.
But,
Eddie Izzard is one of the first people to follow a travel itinerary based on
the markers in his DNA. For the BBC programs he makes two related
journeys.One tracing the migration
patterns indicated from his maternal DNA marks and the other based on the DNA
marker from his Y chromosome which traces his paternal line.Meet the Izzards
We are taking some
journeys this week ourselves. They aren't based on any new genetic data but they are focused on learning more about related species and their inherited characteristics. Our grade
4 classes are traveling the short distance to Regents Park on a series of water
bird surveys. I will post some photos
from our field trips and the results of our surveys later early next week.
.jpg)
.jpg)
