Queen+Bees

RSS Chapters 3 and 4 review questions, - Chapter 3, #1 “How can educators harness young children’s shared base of understanding and skill to help them learn science? Science is all around us. In order for children to easily understand science concepts it would be helpful for them to be able to relate them to their experiences outside of the science classroom. In order to encourage them to think like a scientist is would be helpful to have them start applying there concepts.

- Chapter 3, #2 “How can children’s misconceptions about science act as stepping-stones to greater scientific understanding? How does this differ from past thinking about children’s misconceptions?” In order to work through their misconceptions, teachers could set up a lab where these misconceptions would cause the student to fail. Students learn from their mistake and grow from them, by knowing their misconceptions we can help them work through these mistakes.

- Chapter 4, #1 “How does the idea of building on core concepts over longer periods of time differ from the science practice you remember from your own experiences in school? What do you see as the benefits and challenges to teaching this way?” We were taught one chapter and then the next, instead of a continuous concept building upon itself. The benefits of building through concepts is by accomplishing a deeper understand of the material. It would be difficult at times to relate everything if the students do not have all the basics at first. Time also becomes an issue.

- Chapter 4, #3 “As a prospective teacher, what ideas would you have for adapting a single science unit to fulfill both short-term and long-term goals in a learning progression?” A long-term goal could be learning overall concepts say of cell replication instead of short-term concepts such as the actually phases of mitosis and meiosis. Also a long-term goal would be real life applications such as health concepts instead of how the body metabolizes vitamins or minerals.

- Other “Describe the conceptual change theory of learning. Give some examples within your group's subject areas for each of the three types of conceptual change.”

The conceptual change theory of learning has three sub-headings: elaborating on a pre-existing concept, restructuring a network of concepts, and achieving new levels of explanation. All of which, deal with building on or changing existing ideas. In elaborating on a pre-existing concept, a basic idea is expanded upon. In biology, a student may understand that cells divide and then they learn the actual process. Taking a pre-existing concept and thinking of it in a new way is restructuring a network of concepts. A student may relate mutations as a mistake and later learn that these mistakes can create evolutionary changes.