Preparing and Presenting Effective K-12 Math, Science, Technology and Engineering Education Activities
For technical professionals many years away from elementary and secondary school, working with teachers and young students can be tremendously satisfying - and sometimes a little daunting. Once you have chosen what to use as a resource, the question of how to use it effectively needs to be addressed. Some careful preparation and common sense precautions will go far to making a joint educational venture successful and rewarding for everyone involved. An excellent list of principles has been developed by Sandia National Laboratories Educational Outreach Department.
Become the Teachers' Ally
- Team with the teachers.
Don't go into schools with negative attitudes about teachers or the educational system. Such attitudes are frequently naive and unjustified. In addition, they will alienate your strongest potential allies, thereby predisposing your efforts to failure. Instead, interact with teachers as respected peers and valued customers. Remember that they are the experienced educational professional. Express interest in them and get them to tell you about their programs, what their needs are, and how they think you can best help them. Then tailor your activities to meet their expressed needs.
- Do activities which complement and enhance the teachers' plans.
Avoid doing activities that are unrelated to the curriculum. Find out what topics the teachers are covering and do activities that fit in, provide reinforcement, show applications, and explore new dimensions. This promotes a synergism which can increase both your and their effectiveness for the benefit of the students.
- Make teachers' lives simpler, not more complex.
Teachers are pulled in many different directions and are very busy. Seek to enhance their efforts without imposing a lot of extra demands on their already hectic schedules. Avoid becoming viewed as a time sink or just another person competing for their attention. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Plan Student Activities which are Interesting and Educationally Sound
- Invest time in preparation.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your in-depth understanding of science content eliminates the need for you to do much preparation. The challenge is to present science in an exciting, educationally effective, and age-appropriate manner. This takes careful thought and preparation!
- Target the average students.
Do things that nearly everyone can understand and succeed in. If you target only the high achievers the other 80 percent will become discouraged and decide that science and math are just too hard for them. Target the mainstream students, and offer optional extensions for the high achievers.
- Do activities that are age-appropriate.
Essentially all elementary school and many middle school students are concrete thinkers - they can comprehend what they detect with their physical senses, but not abstract representations of reality, such as graphs and algebraic equations. Students begin to develop abstract thinking abilities in middle and high school. Even there it's best to start off concrete and transition into the abstract to the extent that you see the students are staying with you. (For more information see the videotape, "A Biological Basis for Thinking," available from Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA 96720, (510) 642-1016).
- Don't try to cover too much.
It's easy to assume that concepts and procedures which have become second nature to you can be quickly learned by others - but it simply isn't true. It takes multiple exposures, active participation in applications, and time for new concepts to become integrated into our brains. A small amount of material presented very effectively is much better than a lot covered so hurriedly that it's confusing.
- Emphasize applications; present principles in the context of relevant applications.
The paradigm "first we'll learn the theory and principles, then we'll apply them" is boring and motivationally bankrupt. Very few students learn effectively in this sequence. Applications are not only more interesting than theory, they also provide a concrete context through which students are better able to grasp the underlying principles, which are by nature more abstract. Concentrate on applications that are real and important in the world of the students and age group you are working with - skateboards, stereos, sports equipment, clothing, etc., rather than applications that are interesting and relevant primarily to technical professionals - integrated circuits, ion accelerators, etc. The most compelling applications are those which are rooted in relevant social issues and have positive impacts on quality of life - health issues, environmental protection, etc.
- Promote hands-on student discovery experiences.
Kids learn by doing, particularly young ones! Hands-on activities in which students discover things for themselves are the highest quality learning experiences. Students forget most of the things their teachers tell them. But when adults lead kids in experiences where they wrestle with an interesting personal observation and figure it out "by themselves" - those things are remembered forever. Seek to be more of a guide to discovery than a conveyor of information and provider of answers.
- Emphasize scientific method and logical thinking, not just science & math content.
Help debunk the myth that science & math consists primarily of memorizing facts, formulas & vocabulary, grinding through arithmetic mechanics, and being able to instantly recall all the right answers. Emphasize that science involves figuring out how things work, wondering what would happen if..., making educated guesses, doing experiments, changing your mind when the experimental results disagree with your hypothesis, and applying your new understanding to make better products and improve the quality of life. Doing experiments is not only more fun than memorizing facts, but it also helps develop the logical process skills that all students will need in order to become productive citizens. Helping produce a technologically literate public that examines information is even more important than helping students learn specific scientific content.
- Make use of existing educational resources.
There are lots of outstanding hands-on activity plans available. Become familiar with them and use them. Avoid the temptation to reinvent all your activities from scratch. You will not only save a lot of time, but your activities will benefit from the ideas and experiences of others.
- Be sure to be safe.
Don't take any chances with safety. Think through your activities carefully and avoid things that could be dangerous. Always have the appropriate safety supplies (safety glasses, etc.) available for everyone. Remember, your job is not only to be safe, but to model safety and to convey that concern for health, safety and the environment is a high priority within the scientific community.
- Try out experiments and demonstrations ahead of time.
Murphy's Law is universal. Hardly anything works exactly as expected the first time. Trying things out ahead of time enables you to make adjustments and modifications, and helps you identify some of the incidental supplies required that you might otherwise overlook.
- Check out the logistics of the classroom.
Are there any special arrangements or supplies needed? Does the school have things on hand that you won't have to bring (safety glasses, batteries, etc.). Thinking through such issues ahead of time helps avoid last minute panics and disruptions through which the students' hard-won interest can be easily lost.
- Review your plans with the teacher.
Teachers have a good feel for what things will and won't work effectively. Take advantage of their expertise. Review your plans with them prior to your time with the students, and make changes in response to their suggestions.
Present Your Activity Effectively
- Start with an attention getter.
Don't assume that everyone will be sitting on the edges of their chairs just waiting for the pearls of wisdom you're going to drop on them. You have to win their attention and interest. Activities or demonstrations which produce dramatic or surprising results help arouse students' curiosity and focus their attention.
- Be excited and fun to be with.
Your attitude will set the tone. Your excitement (or lack of it) is likely to be contagious. Help debunk the myths that science & math are boring and technical professionals are dull. (They are only myths, aren't they?) We shouldn't mislead students to believe that science is nothing but excitement and fun, but neither should we start off with a hard-line diatribe about science requiring great personal sacrifice and self-discipline. Instead, begin by doing a fun and/or exciting activity related to the topic at hand. Then transition into things that require greater concentration. Once interest is aroused concentration becomes more achievable.
- Involve the students to the greatest possible extent.
Minimize lecture; maximize action, interaction, and best of all, hands-on discovery-based activities. The more the students are actively involved the more they'll pay attention, and the more learning will occur.
- Turn unexpected results into learning experiences.
If something doesn't work right, don't panic! Turn it into a learning experience by having the students hypothesize what might have gone wrong and then develop and conduct experiments to test their hypotheses. If all attempts fail, admit that you don't understand what happened, but will try to figure it out later and report back to them. Overcoming the common misconceptions that science is cut and dried and that technical professionals know all the right answers is a worthwhile lesson in itself.
- Give positive feedback.
Praise people when they get something right. Take advantage of opportunities to turn even incorrect answers and hypotheses into something positive by emphasizing that science is about making your best guess, experimenting, and figuring things out, rather than memorizing facts and always proposing correct hypotheses. Point out that many of your hypotheses turn out to be wrong, that the best scientists are those who change their minds and learn when experimental results disprove their hypotheses, and that this is the way in which scientific advances are made.
- Share yourself with the students.
Don't overlook the human interest issue. As a natural part of your activity share things like how you got interested in science or engineering, what types of things you do at work (in terms that they can understand), what you enjoy most about your job, how your work has made a societal contribution, something funny that happened to you at work, what your hobbies are, etc. Emphasize particularly how taking learning seriously has paid off for you, and encourage them in this regard.
- Avoid gender and ethnic stereotyping.
Consciously avoid language, mindsets, and actions which disenfranchise females and minorities. These groups are already severely underrepresented in the technical community. Make an active effort to be part of the solution, rather than inadvertently helping perpetuate the problem.
- Maintain control, but without stifling fun.
It's best to have an agreement with the teacher that he or she will always be present and will take responsibility for classroom management or discipline. If, however, you are in a position where you need to criticize or discipline a student, always criticize the inappropriate behavior rather than the person, and never embarrass kids in front of their peers.
- Don't try to be impressive.
If you try to impress students or teachers with how much you know you will almost always succeed, but the byproduct will be reinforcement of the mindset that "only the smartest people can do science and math." Instead, do things that promote the mindset, "This is neat, and I can do it."
- Minimize technical jargon.
Make a conscious effort to scrub your vocabulary of all unnecessary technical jargon, especially acronyms. These only cause unnecessary confusion.
- Plan a good conclusion or wrap-up.
Finish with something that reviews and emphasizes how much they've learned. Provide encouragement that the investments they make in learning as students will pay dividends in the future (possibly by sharing your own life experience).
Follow Up
- Provide suggestions and/or materials for follow-up activities.
These could include projects that students can do as individuals or in groups (perhaps for events such as science fairs), activities that the teacher can do with the entire class, experiments that students can do at home with their parents, ideas for related field trips, etc.
- Solicit feedback from the teacher(s).
Find out what aspects of your program the teachers thought were effective and ineffective, and solicit their suggestions for improvement. Value this feedback and use it to make your future activities better.
- Make a long term commitment and follow through on it.
It's best not to do only a one-shot activity with a class - you'll never get beyond the steepest part of the learning curve or build the trusting relationships out of which the most important interactions occur. The initial activities are usually the most difficult. Subsequent interactions become more relaxed and fruitful as relationships develop and mutual understanding increases. Remember that enhancing science education is a marathon, not a sprint.
Additional Resources
- For the full text of these principles and other resources, see Sandia’s Education Outreach site. Other excellent sites for technical professionals planning to work with schools are:
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