Overheard at the Region's Science Meeting
Last Friday, the Region hosted a meeting of Science AP's - in reality, a mix of principals, APs, lead teachers, science teachers, etc. - to discuss ways to prepare for the written part of the Intermediate Level Science Exam which we will be giving to the eighth graders in June.
I have a lot of respect for the people who hosted this meeting, but I must say that it was a very annoying 2 hours.
I had hoped to get a scheduled opportunity to sit down with other science teachers & administrators, look at the exam and how it is scored, think about what our kids know and what they struggle with, and come up with a bunch of concrete strategies for making sure they rock & roll.
Instead, everyone aired their complaints. I feel for anyone teaching in a school where the kids get only 1 or 2 periods of science per week, I really do. I also understand that many of our students have trouble with the literacy requirements of the test, regardless of how well they might know the science concepts. I think these complaints are valid, but I don't want to sit around and discuss them - without any plan for making change - for two hours on a Friday afternoon when I have classes I could be teaching.
As inner-city school teachers, we have many things to complain about, we see & experience injustices, but I feel that at times people use that to legitimize a culture of excuse-making.
Many people brought up the need to have the help and support of the literacy teachers to make sure that our children have the reading and writing skills they need to succeed on the ILS exam. It's a reasonable point; we can't go it alone. But after that had been brought up several times, it started to sound like a way of shifting the burden of getting the kids through the test onto someone else's shoulders. I wanted to stand up and say to the others at the meeting: "So the kids have trouble with the literacy tasks on the test... so what are you going to do about it?"
The way I see it, we each have a sphere of influence, that circle within which we have the power to make change, to improve things. I wanted to say: Okay, so we all agree that we need the help of the literacy teachers. So, if you're an AP, go back to your school and schedule a time for your literacy and science teachers to meet, provide copies of the tests, and give them an opportunity to come up with real strategies for preparing the kids in both disciplines. If you're a teacher, go back to your school and find one sympathetic literacy teacher and discuss ideas that each of you can use in your teaching to support content area reading and writing skills. If you can't think of anyone who will work with you, then think about assignments you can give that will help the kids understand science AND will help the kids practice the reading and writing skills they will need on the test. If you're a principal, provide more time for science in your curriculum, and arrange for PD on the subject of content-area literacy. Go home and DO something!
I mean, what do you think the literacy teachers talk about when they have meetings? Can't you just imagine them saying, "We need more help from the Science and Social Studies teachers in preparing the kids for the English Language Arts test..." It is self-evident to me that teachers in all subject areas should be reinforcing literacy skills. It is also clear to me that we should not become so overwhelmed with literacy tasks that we lose sight of the best practices in teaching our own subjects. So, we have to find ways to seamlessly integrate science and reading, science and writing, and - dare I say! - science and math.
The presenter put a sample question from the multiple choice portion of the test on an overhead. It was a diagram of a food web, and the question, "What is the role of the fox in this food web?" The four choices were typical ecology terms, like producer, consumer, herbivore, decomposer.
After a bit of discussion, a teacher commented, "Just to play devil's advocate here: my students don't know any of those words!"
Now, if your students only have science once a week, then of course there will be many concepts and words on the test that they haven't seen, and that's a damn shame. Point taken. Over the long term, you might be able to put some pressure on your administration to change that, and you might be able to enlist the Region's help in this. But the question remains: what are you going to do about it in the short term? Teach them something! Sure, you won't be able to cover everything, but even with 5 hours of science per week, I'd be very surprised if my students have seen everything on the test. All I can do is teach them as much as possible, and that's all anyone can do. But to stand up and say, "None of my kids know those words!" ... that's just embarrassing.
The presenter continued by demonstrating how a student could use process of elimination to narrow down the choices for the sample question. Another teacher chimed in, "But remember, our students are under time pressure during this test. Does it really make sense for them to spend time figuring out which answers are wrong when they could be looking for the right answer instead?"
I am still dumbfounded.
I don't even want to argue this point, but...
your best students will see the answer right off, and if they are sure of it, then more power to them;
other students will locate the best answer by going through the process of elimination quickly in their heads, and all should be encouraged to at least scan the other answer choices once they think they've found the answer to make sure there isn't a better answer;
your struggling students might benefit from a structured method of approaching unfamiliar material.
*sigh*
I didn't get a single new insight into the test or how to prepare the students for it. I know because I didn't write down anything, nothing, not one note, and I had a pen and paper ready.
I DID get into a debate with another teacher about how many legs caterpillars have. We were both partly right - they have only six REAL legs (being insects) but they have many more pseudo-legs, which lack the joints characteristic of arthropods. That's why we can tell our students that all insects have six legs - and still include caterpillars - but we can observe real-life caterpillars with many, many legs. Learn something every day, right?
I have a lot of respect for the people who hosted this meeting, but I must say that it was a very annoying 2 hours.
I had hoped to get a scheduled opportunity to sit down with other science teachers & administrators, look at the exam and how it is scored, think about what our kids know and what they struggle with, and come up with a bunch of concrete strategies for making sure they rock & roll.
Instead, everyone aired their complaints. I feel for anyone teaching in a school where the kids get only 1 or 2 periods of science per week, I really do. I also understand that many of our students have trouble with the literacy requirements of the test, regardless of how well they might know the science concepts. I think these complaints are valid, but I don't want to sit around and discuss them - without any plan for making change - for two hours on a Friday afternoon when I have classes I could be teaching.
As inner-city school teachers, we have many things to complain about, we see & experience injustices, but I feel that at times people use that to legitimize a culture of excuse-making.
Many people brought up the need to have the help and support of the literacy teachers to make sure that our children have the reading and writing skills they need to succeed on the ILS exam. It's a reasonable point; we can't go it alone. But after that had been brought up several times, it started to sound like a way of shifting the burden of getting the kids through the test onto someone else's shoulders. I wanted to stand up and say to the others at the meeting: "So the kids have trouble with the literacy tasks on the test... so what are you going to do about it?"
The way I see it, we each have a sphere of influence, that circle within which we have the power to make change, to improve things. I wanted to say: Okay, so we all agree that we need the help of the literacy teachers. So, if you're an AP, go back to your school and schedule a time for your literacy and science teachers to meet, provide copies of the tests, and give them an opportunity to come up with real strategies for preparing the kids in both disciplines. If you're a teacher, go back to your school and find one sympathetic literacy teacher and discuss ideas that each of you can use in your teaching to support content area reading and writing skills. If you can't think of anyone who will work with you, then think about assignments you can give that will help the kids understand science AND will help the kids practice the reading and writing skills they will need on the test. If you're a principal, provide more time for science in your curriculum, and arrange for PD on the subject of content-area literacy. Go home and DO something!
I mean, what do you think the literacy teachers talk about when they have meetings? Can't you just imagine them saying, "We need more help from the Science and Social Studies teachers in preparing the kids for the English Language Arts test..." It is self-evident to me that teachers in all subject areas should be reinforcing literacy skills. It is also clear to me that we should not become so overwhelmed with literacy tasks that we lose sight of the best practices in teaching our own subjects. So, we have to find ways to seamlessly integrate science and reading, science and writing, and - dare I say! - science and math.
The presenter put a sample question from the multiple choice portion of the test on an overhead. It was a diagram of a food web, and the question, "What is the role of the fox in this food web?" The four choices were typical ecology terms, like producer, consumer, herbivore, decomposer.
After a bit of discussion, a teacher commented, "Just to play devil's advocate here: my students don't know any of those words!"
Now, if your students only have science once a week, then of course there will be many concepts and words on the test that they haven't seen, and that's a damn shame. Point taken. Over the long term, you might be able to put some pressure on your administration to change that, and you might be able to enlist the Region's help in this. But the question remains: what are you going to do about it in the short term? Teach them something! Sure, you won't be able to cover everything, but even with 5 hours of science per week, I'd be very surprised if my students have seen everything on the test. All I can do is teach them as much as possible, and that's all anyone can do. But to stand up and say, "None of my kids know those words!" ... that's just embarrassing.
The presenter continued by demonstrating how a student could use process of elimination to narrow down the choices for the sample question. Another teacher chimed in, "But remember, our students are under time pressure during this test. Does it really make sense for them to spend time figuring out which answers are wrong when they could be looking for the right answer instead?"
I am still dumbfounded.
I don't even want to argue this point, but...
your best students will see the answer right off, and if they are sure of it, then more power to them;
other students will locate the best answer by going through the process of elimination quickly in their heads, and all should be encouraged to at least scan the other answer choices once they think they've found the answer to make sure there isn't a better answer;
your struggling students might benefit from a structured method of approaching unfamiliar material.
*sigh*
I didn't get a single new insight into the test or how to prepare the students for it. I know because I didn't write down anything, nothing, not one note, and I had a pen and paper ready.
I DID get into a debate with another teacher about how many legs caterpillars have. We were both partly right - they have only six REAL legs (being insects) but they have many more pseudo-legs, which lack the joints characteristic of arthropods. That's why we can tell our students that all insects have six legs - and still include caterpillars - but we can observe real-life caterpillars with many, many legs. Learn something every day, right?
posted by ms. v. at 7:17 PM
2 Comments:
I feel for you. Well written post -- great way to communicate to those both in and out of the field of public education what an uphill battle this is. What region do you teach in? I am an ESL teacher who is teaching science (among other things) this year. Our region is just now putting together a science curriculum despite the fact that the science test is soon to be high-stakes (next year? the year after?). Last year, the science teachers at my school put together a science curriculum for the whole school without consulting the ESL teachers, despite the fact that three ESL teachers and one math teacher are teaching science to the ESL students. Needless to say, there is no way to teach all the content I'm supposed to teach (especially having no science background). Some of my students just arrived in the country last week. Others, despite having been here for a few years, have learned life science almost exclusively. We have fun in class and learn English and learn some science content...but the test is scary. (Although my kids DO know those food web terms!) I don't want to deny my responsibility as their science teacher to do the best job that I can, but it seems like an injustice to the kids...particularly because they're English language learners. Ugh.
**eLearning**
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