Teaching science

Science teachers have an exciting opportunity to teach kids about how science makes the world work. Unfortunately, reduced teaching budgets and apathy on the part of students sometimes makes it difficult to get students interested in topics like biology, earth science, anatomy, physics, and chemistry. Some teachers are now using techniques such as peer learning, role-playing, and incorporating current events in science lesson plans. These techniques help engage students and help them understand the importance of science. They also make it fun to teach scientific concepts and help students understand common topics in the scientific world.

Peer-to-Peer Teaching

Traditionally, teachers used the lecture format to teach children about science. One of the drawbacks to the lecture format is that it does not engage students in their learning. This teaching technique encourages rote memorization and note-taking instead of excitement about the world of science. Peer-to-peer teaching is when the students actually get involved in teaching each other about science. This is an active learning method that encourages students to discuss scientific topics, develop questions about the material, and work in teams to learn new information. Buzz groups, solution and critic groups, and affinity groups are just three of the ways to use peer-to-peer teaching in the classroom. When students work in buzz groups, they spend approximately 20 minutes studying a topic and gathering information. At the end of the session, one representative from each group presents information to the entire class. For solution and critic groups, the teacher assigns one group of students to gather information and give a presentation. A second group of students acts as the critic group by evaluating the presentation. Affinity groups work together outside of the classroom and then present their findings during normal class time. All of these techniques help students develop research and presentation skills that will help them in the science classroom as well as other areas of life.

Lecturing

  The lecture method is just one of several teaching methods, though in schools it’s usually considered the primary one. The lecture method is convenient for the institution and cost-efficient, especially with larger classroom sizes. This is why lecturing is the standard for most college courses, when there can be several hundred students in the classroom at once; lecturing lets professors address the most people at once, in the most general manner, while still conveying the information that he or she feels is most important, according to the lesson plan.^[3] While the lecture method gives the instructor or teacher chances to expose students to unpublished or not readily available material, the students plays a passive role which may hinder learning. While this method facilitates large-class communication, the lecturer must make constant and conscious effort to become aware of student problems and engage the students to give verbal feedback. It can be used to arouse interest in a subject provided the instructor has effective writing and speaking skills.^[4]

Demonstrating

Demonstrating is the process of teaching through examples or experiments. For example, a science teacher may teach an idea by performing an experiment for students. A demonstration may be used to prove a fact through a combination of visual evidence and associated reasoning.

Demonstrations are similar to written storytelling and examples in that they allow students to personally relate to the presented information. Memorization of a list of facts is a detached and impersonal experience, whereas the same information, conveyed through demonstration, becomes personally relatable. Demonstrations help to raise student interest and reinforce memory retention because they provide connections between facts and real-world applications of those facts. Lectures, on the other hand, are often geared more towards factual presentation than connective learning.

Collaborating

Collaboration allows students to actively participate in the learning process by talking with each other and listening to other points of view. Collaboration establishes a personal connection between students and the topic of study and it helps students think in a less personally biased way. Group projects and discussions are examples of this teaching method. Teachers may employ collaboration to assess student's abilities to work as a team, leadership skills, or presentation abilities.

Collaborative discussions can take a variety of forms, such as fishbowl discussions. After some preparation and with clearly defined roles, a discussion may constitute most of a lesson, with the teacher only giving short feedback at the end or in the following lesson.

Classroom discussion

The most common type of collaborative method of teaching in a class is classroom discussion. It is the also a democratic way of handling a class, where each student is given equal opportunity to interact and put forth their views. A discussion taking place in a classroom can be either facilitated by a teacher or by a student. A discussion could also follow a presentation or a demonstration. Class discussions can enhance student understanding, add context to academic content, broaden student perspectives, highlight opposing viewpoints, reinforce knowledge, build confidence, and support community in learning. The opportunities for meaningful and engaging in-class discussion may vary widely, depending on the subject matter and format of the course. Motivations for holding planned classroom discussion, however, remain consistent.^[6] An effective classroom discussion can be achieved by probing more questions among the students, paraphrasing the information received, using questions to develop critical thinking with questions like "Can we take this one step further?;" "What solutions do you think might solve this problem?;" "How does this relate to what we have learned about..?;" "What are the differences between ... ?;" "How does this relate to your own experience?;" "What do you think causes .... ?;" "What are the implications of .... ?" ^[7]

It is clear from “the impact of teaching strategies on learning strategies in first-year higher education cannot be overlooked nor over interpreted, due to the importance of students' personality and academic motivation which also partly explain why students learn the way they do”^[8] that Donche agrees with the previous points made in the above headings but he also believes that student's personalities contribute to their learning style.

Classroom Action Research

Classroom Action Research is a method of finding out what works best in your own classroom so that you can improve student learning. We know a great deal about good teaching in general (e.g. McKeachie, 1999; Chickering and Gamson, 1987; Weimer, 1996), but every teaching situation is unique in terms of content, level, student skills and learning styles, teacher skills and teaching styles, and many other factors. To maximize student learning, a teacher must find out what works best in a particular situation.^[10] Each teaching and research method, model and family is essential to the practice of technology studies. Teachers have their strengths and weaknesses, and adopt particular models to complement strengths and contradict weaknesses. Here, the teacher is well aware of the type of knowledge to be constructed. At other times, teachers equip their students with a research method to challenge them to construct new meanings and knowledge. In schools, the research methods are simplified, allowing the students to access the methods at their own levels.