Teacher-to-Teacher Tip Archive
Tips for using Science World in the classroom
November 9, 2009
From Priscilla Chan, a science teacher at Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies in New York City, suggests: To stimulate students’ curiosity and questioning, I cut out pictures from Science World, and give them to small groups of students. Then, I ask them to write down what questions they think that the scientists may have been posing about the picture’s subject. When they’re done, the students read the associated article and see if their predictions were accurate, and if not, they learn what area of investigation scientists are really studying.
October 26, 2009
From Laura Barone, science teacher at Portsmouth Middle School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, suggests: When a new issue of Science World arrives, I have my students scan the entire issue and write down all of the italicized vocabulary words with Greek or Latin roots. Then, I ask the students to try and decode as many as possible before we read the articles. After reading the articles and discussing the words, students look at their list to see how close their list of guesses were. They are usually amazed at how many they found in the issue and how many they already know. We then use the unknown roots as an assignment to learn new vocabulary. For example, the vocabulary word sanguivore in this issue is composed of the Latin root words sangui- meaning "blood" and -vore meaning "to eat."
October 5, 2009
From Priscilla Chan, a science teacher at Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies in New York City: I find that students have difficulty with place value and how large or small a number should be. So, in order to help them understand the concept of scale, I take the "Numbers in the News" numerals and separate them from the written description. Then, I challenge students to use their number-sense skills to match up which numeral goes with which description.
September 21, 2009
From Laura Barone, science teacher at Portsmouth Middle School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: This issue is great to help teach the Scientific Method Skills Unit. Each day, I have students do simple classroom experiments that highlight the steps in the scientific method. Before we do an experiment, we read the article that introduces and explains each step: asking a testable question; writing a hypothesis as an "if, then" statement; breaking a procedure into logical steps; collecting and displaying data; and forming a conclusion based on the data. I conduct labs that feature each of these steps, and I use the magazine as a model.
September 7, 2009
From Kim Wiens: Science World’s “I Want THAT Job!” feature informs students about the diversity of jobs available to those with a degree in a science-related field. Each issue profiles a scientist with a cool career and includes information about how teens should prepare for the career, where and for whom they might work, how much they would earn, and the job’s daily duties. I save all my issues and have my students do an “I Want THAT Job!” survey. Students work in groups and summarize the facts of about four to eight careers, noting whether or not each career interests them and if so, why. Click here to download the survey form.
