Perspectives of Hands-On
Science Teaching

David L. Haury and Peter Rillero, 1994
5. Where do I find resources to develop hands-on activities?

In terms of time investment, it is often most efficient for teachers to find, tailor, and use existing activities developed by others. In this section we provide perspectives on where teachers can find activities and related resource materials. Every classroom is different, and every teacher has his or her own instructional style, so it is critical to the success of hands-on approaches to learning that each teacher be a developer of activities and instructional strategies. A natural feature of hands-on teaching and learning is that no two teaching situations are exactly alike, nor will a given instructional activity often be implemented in exactly the same way in different classrooms.

Teacher Responses

• In my own experience, I generate lab activities based upon ideas obtained by four different means. A primary resource for developing hand- on activities has to be textbooks. I have a tendency to stockpile old physical science textbooks and peruse them for ideas on labwork. In a similar vein, the reading of science periodicals and NSTA publications [Science and Children, Science Scope, and The Science Teacher] will also lead to generation of hands-on activities.

A second resource I use to develop hands-on activities is other teachers. Almost all teachers have some original ideas or have read some resource you have not. Failure to tap into the minds of your peers would have to be considered one of the original sins of teaching.

A third means of developing lab activities is the use of currently used activities. I have found far too many lab activities where students only superficially analyze what they have investigated. In rewriting interpretations to include more critical thinking skills, students end up hypothesizing on related questions and topics. Many of these types of questions have led me to design related labs to an original lab.

A fourth resource I use to develop hands-on activities is the students themselves. No matter how long you teach, students will continue to ask questions that you have never been asked before. Since all labwork is based upon finding answers to questions, students may design labs themselves based upon these questions. In many instances we have designed labs in class by collecting data and manipulating variables. Larry Dutcher, Hixson Middle School, Webster Groves, MO

• First I decide a topic I want to teach students. Then I develop an outline and look for activities that will make it interesting to students. I look to NSF curricula such as AIMS, GEMS, TOPS, OBIS, CHEM, CEPUP etc. Books and magazines I have found useful include CESI sourcebooks, Science for Children (a topical index put out by the Smithsonian), and Ranger Rick's Nature Scope magazine.

I attend every state and national science convention I can to help [stay] abreast of new developments and curricula. I have many binders of activities collected from CESI make and takes, SEPA Share-A-Thons (Society for Elementary Presidents Awards) and sessions I have attended. The exhibit area also has good ideas to be gotten.

Each summer I have taken part in some NSF institute in our state and out of state. I see these offered in NSF reports or journals. I have attended institutes on Bottle Biology-Fast Plants, Operation Physics, Particles and Prairies at Fermi Lab, Astronomy and Fermi to name a few. NSTA's journal Science and Children is an excellent resource. I also use a laser disk program (Windows on Science) for technology purposes. I also inquire into units developed by exampling school districts such as Mesa, AZ and Schaumbery and Henidel IL. It doesn't happen overnight, but gradually you will find your resources adequate to meet your needs to teach exciting science. Bob Burtch (Presidential Award Nominee, grade 5 teacher), J B Nelson Elementary School, Batavia, IL

Developer Thoughts

• Say you want to teach a life science unit organized around the half dozen microscopes purchased from last year's special funding. You consult your TOPS Ideas catalog and find a few related lessons on Light, but otherwise come up dry. What should you do next?

Because all hands-on activity involves materials, your next step is to pull together anything related to microscopes (even remotely) and place it on a designated table. Go on a nature scavenger hunt with your class. Ask your students to bring small things of interest from home. Add everything that turns up to your table collection. Then ask each student to focus on one particular object. Examine it through a microscope, of course. Write about it. Draw it. Design an activity to teach someone else something new. Swap activities.

This sort of unstructured messing about is not for the uninitiated. It will generate confusion and noise to be sure. But for you veteran teachers skilled at pulling order out of chaos, the results are rewarding. Not only will you foster creativity and problem solving skills, [but] you will also generate a wealth of microscope activities using materials you already have!

You can, of course, mess about with your own table full of materials at home, then bring a collection of more organized activities to school. (As a curriculum developer, this is what I do all the time.) Either way, the same important principle holds: assemble materials first. Creative, inexpensive ideas will follow, more wonderful than you ever thought possible. Ron Marson, TOPS Learning Systems, Canby, OR

• A hands-on approach requires students to become active participants instead of passive learners who listen to lectures or watch films. Laboratory and field activities are traditional methods of giving students hands-on experiences. With the advent of classroom technology students can now participate in a non- traditional form of hands-on education through the use of computers. This technology extends hands-on learning to include minds-on skills. An example of this hands-on/minds-on learning is the unique MarsLink curriculum project which provides data to students from the Mars Observer spacecraft. This program is developed and disseminated by The Planetary Society and Washington University, St. Louis. Monthly packets and daily electronic bulletin board activities are designed for students to interpret and analyze data arriving from the exploration of Mars. Students become partners with Mars Observer scientists as they work with data and images from a new world. This partnership brings near "real-time" science to hands-on learning. With this data students can compare images, features, and interactive systems on the Red Planet with those on Earth. This aspect of real space exploration and comparison brings a powerful hands-on opportunity for students to discover and to understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Carol J. Stadum, The Planetary Society (producers of Marslink teaching packets), Pasadena, CA

Notes from the literature

• Identify the four to eight major science topics that you teach at a grade level. Start a filing system of activities based on these major topics (Kotar,1988).
• Conferences can be a great source of teacher tested activities. Donivan (1993) describes coming back from a National Science Teachers Association convention: "The six of us returned to school 'bursting' with ideas, enthusiasm, and lesson plans and resources for hands-on science activities. The experience was too good to keep to ourselves, so the principal set a time for us to present a half-day inservice to the rest of the staff" (p. 30).
• NASA frequently publishes educational materials that contain ideas for developing hands-on activities. In Rockets: A teaching guide for an elementary unit on rocketry (Vogt, 1991), there is factual information on rockets followed by ten hands-on activities utilizing inexpensive materials. Earth's Mysterious Atmosphere. Atlas 1 Teacher's Guide with Activities. For Use with Middle-School Students (NASA, 1992) is designed as a detective story to help the reader appreciate some of the many questions currently studied by scientists around the world regarding changes in the Earth's atmosphere. The science activities and concepts are designed to complement middle school curricula. Space Station Freedom. An Activity Book for Elementary School Students (NASA, 1993) contains activities and illustrations that are meant to be presented to elementary-level school children by a teacher or a parent. The activities subject matter include: the space shuttle, communications, weightlessness, solar energy, hatches and airlocks, and living and working in outer space. These and other NASA publications are available free to educators. Contact: (1) NASA Teacher Resource Center; Mail Stop 8-1; NASA Lewis Research Center; 2100 Brookpark Road; Cleveland, OH 44135; (2) NASA Teacher Resource Laboratory; Mail Code 130-3; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Greenbelt, MD 20771; or (3) your nearest regional NASA Teacher Resource Center.
• ERIC can also be a great source for activities and ideas. ERIC is short for Educational Resources Information Center, a federally funded system that has developed and maintains the world's largest education-related, bibliographic database. You can search the database for materials in a variety of ways, and most of the materials in the database can be obtained in printed form. For more information, contact a reference librarian or call 1-800-LET ERIC. If you have access to the Internet, you can also send an electronic request for assistant directly to the Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education. The electronic mail address is ericse@osu.edu.
• Activities can also be developed from studying proven programs. Promising and Exemplary Programs and Materials in Elementary and Secondary Schools-Science lists many activity centered programs (Helgeson, Howe, & Blosser; 1990). Science Education Programs that Work has compiled a collection of exemplary hands-on programs. These programs include: "Hands-On Elementary Science"; "Life Lab Science Program"; "Starwalk"; "Stones and Bones: A Laboratory Approach to the Study of Biology, Modern Science, and Anthropology"; "Wildlife Inquiry Through Zoo Education (WIZE)"; and "Jeffco Life Science Program" (Sivertsen, 1990). Teachers can read the descriptions of programs and materials and evaluate their appropriateness for their classes. Activities can be modified to meet their students' needs.
• Journals for teachers can be an excellent source for ideas and resources in the development of science activities. For example, from an analysis of a sample of ERIC abstracts Rillero and Roempler (1993) found that in the NSTA publication Science and Children 76.5% of its abstracted feature articles discussed science activities.
• J. Peter O'Neil, a Wisconsin science teacher, has created a Macintosh-based collection of science activities on Microsoft Works and MacPaint files that are accessed with Hypercard (Bruder, 1993). A CD-ROM version with over 1,000 files of science activities will be released this year.
• "A resource book of activities that have been tried and found successful, perhaps modified many times from experience, can be a wonderful thing to have on hand. Good sourcebooks do, in fact, enable most of us in teaching to pinpoint relevant exercises quickly, to challenge individuals or groups of students more engagingly, and offer us useful primary or supplementary learning experiences. Often they provide relief from the constant drain of inner resources, and at other times, good sourcebooks stir our own creative powers to invent, with a particular idea or child in mind" (Pines & Pines, 1981). Pines and Pines go on to say, however, that there are dangers inherent in over-reliance and improper use of sourcebooks. Many valuable sourcebooks and activity guides are available from the National Science Teachers Association and the ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education.
• A particularly useful sourcebook for identifying human resources is the Sourcebook for Science, Mathematics & Technology Education, which is revised annually and published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The authors say, "We want the Sourcebook ... to be the first place you look when you need information about science, mathematics, and technology education" (Calinger & Walthall, 1990). The book includes over 2,000 entries regarding specific programs, publications, and organizations, including the coordinators for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Science and Mathematics Education Program.
• Guidelines can be used to help new teachers select appropriate activities and to tailor activities to their curricula, students, and situations. Rillero, Brownstein, and Feldkamp-Kemp (1994) provide guidelines for choosing effective activities in their Science Activity Filter (see figure 1). When problems with activities are found they can be modified for a particular group of students or situation.

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Figure 1. The guidelines of the Science Activity Filter. The order of the guidelines presents a useful protocol for evaluating science activities for potential use in a classroom.

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• Martinez and Haertel (1991) researched features of science experiments that made them interesting to seventh grade students. Their sample of students first generated lists of features they thought made science experiments interesting. Then the students sorted the combined class lists into three groups. The factors that create interest grouped into three groups or clusters: cognitive, mastery, and social. In the cognitive cluster were the following factors: you learn more, you discover new things, you do something different, you don't know how it will turn out, you feel challenged, and you see changes in what you are doing. In the mastery cluster are the following items: you get to make things, you can take things apart, you can put things together, and you get to use equipment. In the social cluster were the factors: you can work with a friend and you get to talk about your ideas. Martinez and Haertel advise teachers and curriculum developers to arrange instructional materials and procedures to enhance the components of interest.

Summary

There are many sources of science activities and countless resources that can be used for developing activities. Textbooks do provide activity ideas, but teachers should also see each other as sources of ideas for activities. Many teachers participate in conferences, workshops, institutes, and other events where ideas can be gained and exchanged. The periodicals and publications of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) are other places to search for ideas; schools may want to consider subsidizing memberships in NSTA for lead teachers, curriculum specialists, and department chairs in science.

Many sources of activities and resource materials are listed in Appendix B of this guide. Resources such as the ERIC database and other CD-ROM products also greatly facilitate access to information about activities for a wide variety of instructional situations and student populations. Here are four specific places to seek help in locating activities and materials: (a) send an electronic request for help to askeric@ericir.syr.edu, (b) send an electronic mail message to ericse@osu.edu, (c) connect to http://www.ericse.org/, or (d) dial 1-800-LET-ERIC and have them direct you to additional resources.

In choosing or developing activities, however, the focus should be on specific learning outcomes for specific students. The value of hands-on learning is greatly diminished if there is no sense of purpose in doing a particular activity. In every classroom where hands-on learning occurs, the vital connection is the one between the desired student understanding or set of skills and the experiential base from which meaning is being constructed.

Posted to the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory's
Pathways to School Improvement Internet server on July 10, 1995.

Contact: info@ncrel.org