I met with my host teacher and the department leader for my student teaching. As we were talking, my host teacher told me "We were told to incorporate writing, so I have one writing assignment every trimester, and we go into the computer lab...." My heart sank. One assignment is being considered acceptable writing instruction. What a difference a semester has made for me in being able to recognize literacy instruction in all its forms. Admittedly, I still do not feel that my confidence in my vocabulary instruction is as strong as I want it to be. But there are things that some of us have to learn through experience. Vocabulary instruction is where I am going to have to experience my way through gaining comfort and confidence in my teaching ability. Writing instruction though, is not where I am feeling that I will be struggling. There are so many options to use writing more in science. Giving the students the opportunity to write anything, not just one proper English style report a semester is necessary. Not only to teach students my content material, but to teach them how to be contributing people. As more than one of my teachers has told me, "I don't teach science, I teach people. I teach people by teaching them science."
I love biology, I love science, I love my content material that I enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) learning for all these semesters. Yet for all the time future teachers spend in school learning their content, and how to teach their content, I feel not enough focus is placed on the Intended Learning Outcomes. These ILO's are the big picture that our students are supposed to walk out of our classrooms having accomplished and remember. I hate to use a quote of this length in my blog, but I feel it gets the point I am trying to make across so well. In the Utah State Biology Core is a section titled "The Most Important Goal."
The Most Important Goal
Science instruction should cultivate and build on students’ curiosity and sense of wonder. Effective science instruction engages students in enjoyable learning experiences. Science instruction should be as thrilling an experience for a student as opening a rock and seeing a fossil,tracing and interpreting a pedigree, or observing the affects of some chemical on the heartbeat of daphnia. Science is not just for those who have traditionally succeeded in the subject, and it is not just for those who will choose science-related careers. In a world of rapidly expanding knowledge and technology, all students must gain the skills they will need to understand and function responsibly and successfully in the world. The Core provides skills in a context that enables students to experience the joy of doing science.
Science instruction should cultivate and build on students’ curiosity and sense of wonder. Effective science instruction engages students in enjoyable learning experiences. Science instruction should be as thrilling an experience for a student as opening a rock and seeing a fossil,tracing and interpreting a pedigree, or observing the affects of some chemical on the heartbeat of daphnia. Science is not just for those who have traditionally succeeded in the subject, and it is not just for those who will choose science-related careers. In a world of rapidly expanding knowledge and technology, all students must gain the skills they will need to understand and function responsibly and successfully in the world. The Core provides skills in a context that enables students to experience the joy of doing science.
What skill is more vital to "understand and function responsibly and successfully in the world" than literacy, reading, and writing?
