How do we teach elementary science?

I’ve heard it said time and time again that people learn best by “doing”. As a future educator, it is my responsibility to seek out ways in which people learn and teach accordingly. For the last couple years, I have been employed by Texas Tech as a tutor for college students with learning disabilities. Each student had a number of disabilities to deal with, ranging from dyslexia, dyscalculia, attention deficit disorder, etc, as well as varying degrees of these disabilities. Additionally, because of these disabilities, the students possessed different levels of confidence or anxiety when it came to schoolwork or exams. Instead of focusing on my students’ disabilities, I quickly learned to focus on their effective learning styles and worked with them in ways they felt most comfortable and successful. One of the biggest problems for teachers is keeping the students’ attention and finding ways for them to be active participants in classroom lessons. I think this is especially difficult in the elementary science classroom where the majority of topics are most commonly taught by direct instruction and the students practice rote memorization of definitions and formulas. However, I think science provides a great opportunity for students to develop interests to actively pursue and make meaning for themselves.
As students are learning new concepts and connecting them to their previous experiences and pre-existing conceptions about the world, they are able to organize their thoughts and make meaning of new information (accommodation and assimilation). Educational psychologists like Piaget have studied and debated on ways to increase the effectiveness of instruction by developing learning theories, which has lead to ideas of constructivism. The constructivist viewpoint involves the notion that knowledge is gained from experience. This theory is often used to back-up supporters of active learning. I think a good combination of a variety of learning theories is the most effective approach to teaching a variety of learners with different skills, experiences, and learning styles. However, the nature of science allows more room for inquiry-based education, particularly when established on the ideas of constructivism. Many teachers have switched their focus from directly teaching students facts and information to developing classroom activities that help students to develop problem-solving skills. Oftentimes this includes group work with minimal guidance, in which students chose the questions to explore, the procedure for testing their hypothesis, and the teacher serves as a facilitator. Teachers refrain from telling the students the expected outcome and allow them to make predictions of their own based on what they already know. I think it is important for educators to provide definitions to scientific terminology and formulas to assist the students in a sort of “spontaneous discovery.” Children will be engaged as they attempt to learn meaning and answer questions like “why” and “how.” Just as Dr. Narayan says, it is necessary for students to participate in activities that are both “hands-on” and “minds-on.” Even if, in the end students make inaccurate conclusions, feel frustration, or come across dead-ends, important problem-solving skills are refined and they experience the struggles of every scientist. They will develop more confidence with increased exposure to the scientific process and it will help them resolve many conflicts they face. This type of science lesson will also help the instructor to gather information and evaluate the students’ levels of comprehension. Additionally, teachers will be able to enumerate the specific areas of confusion among the class as well as the areas of greatest interest and mastery.