FCAT Science

Thirty ele­men­tary teach­ers attended a full-day hands-on-minds-on, inquiry-based teacher train­ing work­shop enti­tled Teach­ing Sci­ence Through Children’s Lit­er­a­ture. Teach­ers were intro­duced to a wide-array of children’s lit­er­a­ture that can be incor­po­rated into the sci­ence class­room to teach inter­me­di­ate level sci­ence con­cepts cov­er­ing the New World-Class Sun­shine State Sci­ence Stan­dards. Teach­ers con­ducted a wide-array of hands-on-minds-on inves­ti­ga­tions to explore nature of sci­ence, earth and space, phys­i­cal sci­ence, and life sci­ence con­cepts. Inves­ti­ga­tions under­taken by the teach­ers were directly con­nected to the Big Ideas within the New World-Class Sun­shine State Sci­ence Stan­dards. Teach­ers explored the states of mat­ter with a unique non-Newtonian sub­stance called  . They also were intro­duced to how to use Oobleck to teach numer­ous earth and space sci­ence con­cepts. Teach­ers designed and con­structed bot­tle biol­ogy ecosys­tems to rein­force a wide-array of life sci­ence con­cepts includ­ing: food chains, food webs, inter­de­pen­dence, lim­it­ing fac­tors, oxy­gen cycle, nitro­gen cycle, carbon-dioxide cycle, pho­to­syn­the­sis, and the water cycle. Teach­ers were intro­duced to many of Leonardo daVinci’s inno­va­tions and inven­tions by explor­ing the book Who Was Leonardo daVinci by Roberta Edwards. Teach­ers con­structed sim­ple para­chutes and heli­copters, and com­pared bird feath­ers to air­plane wing design to explore force, motion, and energy con­cepts as well as make con­nec­tions to the con­tri­bu­tions of Leonardo daVinci to soci­ety. Teach­ers explored weath­er­ing and ero­sion con­cepts and the rock cycle by con­duct­ing hands-on inves­ti­ga­tions with Coquina Rock. Lastly, teach­ers observed and stud­ied man­grove seedlings to rein­force numer­ous life sci­ence con­cepts. Each hands-on-minds-on inves­ti­ga­tion was directly related to selected children’s lit­er­a­ture. All inves­ti­ga­tions under­taken dur­ing the teacher train­ing work­shop are directly related to FCAT Sci­ence annu­ally assessed bench­marks. A sam­ple of children’s authors included: Lynn Cherry, John Him­mel­man, Dr. Seuss, Ellen Prager, Kris­tine and Robert Thorson,Cherie Mason, Jean Craig­head George, Carl Hiassen, and many oth­ers. All of the children’s lit­er­a­ture intro­duced to the teach­ers and used within the teacher train­ing work­shop can be found and ordered from the fol­low­ing site.

I’ve been con­duct­ing full-day teacher train­ing work­shops for the past two weeks at a quaint beach­side ele­men­tary school located in Volu­sia county, Florida. The six hour work­shops are con­ducted for spe­cific grade lev­els, align­ing with their cur­ricu­lum maps for the last 9 weeks of the 2009–2010 school year. The fol­low­ing pho­tos were taken from the 4th and 5th grade teacher ses­sions. Dur­ing the work­shop teach­ers con­ducted numer­ous inquiry-based hands-on sci­ence inves­ti­ga­tions to explore life sci­ence con­cepts. Teach­ers recorded notes, obser­va­tions, and attached spec­i­mens in their inter­ac­tive stu­dent note­books. Inves­ti­ga­tions made con­nec­tions to the Big Ideas 14–17 from Florida’s Next Gen­er­a­tion Sun­shine State Stan­dards. The teach­ers left the work­shop revi­tal­ized, ener­gized, and excited about explor­ing life sci­ence con­cepts with their stu­dents. Great group of teach­ers, and an exam­ple of a  school that has placed empha­sis on the impor­tance of con­duct­ing mean­ing­ful sci­ence with their stu­dents. Dur­ing the teacher train­ing work­shop teach­ers con­ducted the fol­low­ing investigations:

• Con­ducted inves­ti­ga­tions to explore clas­si­fi­ca­tion con­cepts (animal)
• Con­ducted inves­ti­ga­tions to explore clas­si­fi­ca­tion con­cepts (plant)
• Con­ducted inves­ti­ga­tions to explore life cycles within the plant and ani­mal kingdoms
• Con­ducted inves­ti­ga­tions to com­pare and con­trast among the plant and ani­mal kingdoms
• Designed and con­structed a model of a plant or ani­mal cell using a ziplock bag filled with Karo Syrup (rep­re­sents cyto­plasm), with addi­tional mate­ri­als placed within the bag to rep­re­sent the cell organelles.
• Designed and con­structed a class­room ter­rar­ium rep­re­sent­ing a com­plete ecosys­tem (gar­den snails, pill bugs, earth­worms, bird seed, soil, water, and decay­ing plant mate­r­ial were placed inside aquar­i­ums). Con­cepts cov­ered included: inter­de­pen­dence, ecol­ogy, envi­ron­ment, food web, com­mu­nity, sun, energy, energy trans­for­ma­tion, pro­duc­ers, con­sumers, and decomposers.
• The key con­cept inte­grated within all inves­ti­ga­tions under­taken was struc­ture and func­tion in the plant and ani­mal kingdoms.

Teacher uses a micro­scope to observe pond water organisms.

Teacher builds model plant cell from sim­ple house­hold materials.Cell model lab sheet used in mak­ing model of plant and ani­mal cell.

Teach­ers used inter­ac­tive stu­dent jour­nals dur­ing teacher train­ing workshop.

Teacher builds class­room ter­rar­ium to teach about life sci­ence concepts.

Teach­ers stud­ied the Hibis­cus plants as well as the ani­mals that live on or near the Hibis­cus plants.

SB4, the bill on assess­ment and grad­u­a­tion require­ments passed in the Florida House and Sen­ate, and is now headed for Gov­er­nor Crist’s desk for approval. I see SB4 as a pos­i­tive stepin the right direc­tion for the state of Florida to insure that all of its stu­dents become sci­en­tific lit­er­ate cit­i­zens. Essen­tially the bill will elim­i­nate the Sci­ence FCAT at the high school level, and will be replaced by end of the course sci­ence and math exams. SB4 mod­i­fies the state’s present grad­u­a­tion require­ments of 3 sci­ence courses by requir­ing that one of them be a biol­ogy class and a sec­ond be either a chem­istry or physics class. A weak­ness in SB4 is the lack of address­ing the need for stu­dents to take an Earth and Space Sci­ence related course. Hope­fully, this weak­ness will be addressed in the near future. Oppo­nents of the bill argue that stu­dents not seek­ing to pur­sue higher edu­ca­tion or careers in sci­ence and math should not be expected to take addi­tional math and sci­ence courses. Unfor­tu­nately, the oppo­nents of this bill have yet to con­cep­tu­al­ize the “big pic­ture” which is, it’s irrel­e­vant whether a high school stu­dent has the desire to con­tinue onto col­lege or into a sci­ence or math related career or not. Every indi­vid­ual needs to be exposed to “more advanced” math and sci­ence courses so that when they do grad­u­ate from high school they are sci­en­tific lit­er­ate cit­i­zens. If Gov­er­nor Crist gives his seal of approval for SB4 I’m hop­ing that fund­ing is allo­cated for increased mean­ing­ful math, biol­ogy, and physics lab­o­ra­tory expe­ri­ences for the stu­dents. Sec­ondly, fund­ing for pro­vid­ing on-going, qual­ity math and sci­ence  pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment for the teach­ers will be essen­tial for the imple­men­ta­tion of SB4’s revised math and sci­ence grad­u­a­tion requirements.

The num­ber of Florida stu­dents tak­ing Advanced Place­ment tests hit a record high in 2009, how­ever the num­ber of stu­dents who fail the exams is ris­ing, par­tic­u­larly in the South. No longer are AP classes for an elite group of stu­dents, there has been a major push in the state of Florida to get more stu­dents enrolled in Advanced Place­ment classes. The new Florida high school grade sys­tem will take into account par­tic­i­pa­tion and per­for­mance on the AP exams, adding another incen­tive for schools to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in AP classes. Florida was fifth in the list of states with the great­est per­cent­age of high school seniors doing well on AP exams. In 2009 21.3 per­cent of Florida stu­dents did well on the AP exams, up from 16.3 per­cent in 2004. How­ever, data shows that Florida stu­dents did not do well when com­pared to their national coun­ter­parts on some AP exams, specif­i­cally those in math and sci­ence. On the AP Biol­ogy exam only 32 per­cent of Florida stu­dents did well, earn­ing at least a 3 on the five-level test, com­pared to about 49 per­cent nation­ally. Kris­ten Klopfen­stein, a senior researcher at the Texas Schools Project and a pro­fes­sor on leave from Texas Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity, who con­ducts research on AP has found that stu­dents who take AP often do well in col­lege. How­ever, Klopfenstein’s research shows that it’s other rig­or­ous courses, espe­cially in math and sci­ence that lead to that suc­cess. To see view­points of par­ents and admin­is­tra­tors in regards to the push to take AP courses see the fol­low­ing arti­cle by Leslie Postal in Orlando Sen­tinel on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2010.

There has been talk amongst Florida law­mak­ers over the last sev­eral years to replace high school FCATs with end-of-course exams. It looks like this pro­posal may become a real­ity. A bipar­ti­san group of state law­mak­ers is mov­ing for­ward this leg­isla­tive ses­sion with a plan to replace the high school FCAT test with a series of stan­dard­ized end-of-course exams. The House and Sen­ate edu­ca­tion com­mit­tees plan to jointly intro­duce bills next month. Law­mak­ers believe the pro­posed bill will mod­ern­ize high school account­abil­ity as well as hav­ing stu­dents be assessed with spe­cific tests to cover spe­cific classes ver­sus the exist­ing 11th-grade FCAT sci­ence exam which is not tied to any spe­cific sci­ence class. How­ever, indi­vid­u­als have raised con­cerns that get­ting rid of the FCAT and replac­ing it with another test may not be any bet­ter. Mary­land, Mis­sis­sippi, New York, Ten­nessee, and Vir­ginia began using end-of-course exams in 2009. Texas is in the process of devel­op­ing tests in Eng­lish, Sci­ence, His­tory, and Math for ninth-11th graders grad­u­a­tion require­ments by 2011. If the bill is approved, the pro­posed test­ing change would likely begin with math next year, fol­lowed by sci­ence and read­ing, with the goal of mak­ing a com­plete tran­si­tion within four years. Stu­dents would have to pass the exams to earn course credit, and the courses would become grad­u­a­tion require­ments. Thus, instead of tak­ing a math FCAT in ninth grade, stu­dents would take an exam after com­plet­ing Alge­bra I. Source St. Peters­burg Times, Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 27, 2010 Is FCAT on the way out? by Jef­frey S. Solochek and Ron Matus, Times Staff Writ­ers. For fur­ther details on the pro­posed bill see the fol­low­ing arti­cle .

High­lights of the bill expected to be pre­sented in the next few weeks:

• Sub­sti­tute an end-of-course Alge­bra I exam for ninth-grade FCAT math
• Sub­sti­tute an end-of-course geom­e­try exam for 10th grade FCAT math
• Sub­sti­tute end-of-course Biol­ogy I exam for 11th-grade FCAT science
• Require pas­sage of end-of-course exams to earn credit in those three courses, which would become grad­u­a­tion requirements
• Imple­ment lower-stakes end-of-course exams for English/Language Arts II, Alge­bra II, Chem­istry, Physics, Earth/Space Sci­ence, U.S. His­tory and World His­tory as money is available.

Source Florida House Pre-K-12 Pol­icy Committee 

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Committees/committeesdetail.aspx?CommitteeId=2462&sessionId=64

Gov­er­nor Char­lie Crist signed Florida’s appli­ca­tion for more than $700 mil­lion of the $4.35 bil­lion fed­eral dol­lars that will be avail­able through Race to the Top funds. Race to the Top is the largest-ever fed­eral com­pet­i­tive invest­ment in school reform. The U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion is review­ing the appli­ca­tions, win­ners will be announced for the first round of fund­ing by April.

If Florida is awarded the funds, half of the awarded funds will go to the 59 school dis­tricts, as well as three lab schools, and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind that signed onto to become a part of the reform. The remain­der of the funds will go directly to the state (Tal­la­has­see) to sup­port state-level projects ben­e­fit­ing all school districts.

The fund­ing will be used in the fol­low­ing areas:

Cur­ricu­lum Standards

Assess­ments of Stu­dent Learning

Increased Use of Data (one-stop data crunch­ing for the entire state for use by teach­ers and dis­trict staff).

Teacher and Leader Qual­ity and

Assis­tance for Strug­gling Schools

For com­plete details on Florida’s Race to the Top Grant visit Florida’s Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act  site.

A coali­tion of edu­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and phil­an­thropies announced the launch­ing of National Lab Day. A new grass­roots ini­tia­tive designed to rein­vig­o­rate sci­ence and math edu­ca­tion in the nation’s schools and after-school pro­grams which will is hoped to ulti­mately lead to increased U.S. com­pet­i­tive­ness.
The goal of the ini­tia­tive is to improve the qual­ity of Sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing, and math (STEM) edu­ca­tion in Amer­ica. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between the gov­ern­ment and more than 200 public-and pri­vate sec­tor orga­ni­za­tions, National Lab Day will con­nect stu­dents in grades 6–12 to hands-on learn­ing expe­ri­ences and pro­mote tin­ker­ing in lab­o­ra­tory set­tings. National Lab Day is a New York-based edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to improv­ing sci­ence and math edu­ca­tion nation­wide. National Lab Day wel­comes new part­ner­ships and can be reached at info@nationallabday.org. For fur­ther details on the National Lab Day ini­tia­tive please see the fol­low­ing link to the National Lab Day Orga­ni­za­tion web­site. http://www.nationallabday.org/

Pres­i­dent Obama announced a $250 mil­lion public-private com­bi­na­tion effort to improve sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics instruc­tion. The goal of the ini­tia­tive is to help the United States com­pete in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing fields with global eco­nomic com­peti­tors. The fund­ing will pre­pare more than 10,000 new math and sci­ence teach­ers teach­ers over the next five years, and pro­vide on-the-job train­ing for an addi­tional 100,000 teach­ers in STEM fields. I am hop­ing that the state of Florida ben­e­fits from this inia­tive via pro­vid­ing addi­tional and much needed qual­ity hands-on pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment for math and sci­ence teach­ers. For fur­ther details on the ini­tia­tive see the arti­cle by Nick Ander­son, Wash­ing­ton Post Staff Writer in the fol­low­ing link “>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/06/AR2010010602063.html”>

 Novem­ber 23rd, Pres­i­dent Obama launched the “Edu­cate to Inno­vate” cam­paign. The goal of the nation­wide effort is to move Amer­i­can stu­dents from the mid­dle to the top in sci­ence and math achieve­ment over the next decade, over $260 mil­lion in public-private invest­ments have been made to help achieve this goal. Big name pub­lic and pri­vate part­ner­ships have come on board to help achieve this goal includ­ing: Time Warner Cable, Dis­cov­ery Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Sesame Street’s Early STEM Lit­er­acy Ini­tia­tive, The MacArthur Foun­da­tion, Sony Com­puter Enter­tain­ment Amer­ica, and numer­ous other cor­po­ra­tions. States have begun sub­mit­ting qual­i­fy­ing paper­work to state their inter­est in apply­ing for  “Race to the Top” funds. States receiv­ing Race to the Top funds will have to dra­mat­i­cally improve their schools and stu­dent achieve­ment in sci­ence and math. A major por­tion of the funds are expected to be used for pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment. For fur­ther details on the “Edu­cate to Inno­vate” cam­paign see the offi­cial White House Press release below.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-launches-educate-innovate-campaign-excellence-science-technology-en

An arti­cle in The Her­ald Tri­bune by Tiffany Lakes, pub­lished on Decem­ber 20th, 2009 pro­vides details on sev­eral Sara­sota schools and their plans to pre­pare stu­dents for this year’s FCAT. Arti­cle is enti­tled “This Year’s FCAT Les­son: Plan Ahead.” See the link below for the com­plete article.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20091220/article/912201041