4/13: Laura - Encouraging literacy

            Scientific literacy is an illusive concept that I think includes both conceptual familiarity and the tools, cognitive framework, and attitudes necessary to access content.  I often joke about the “science or not science” game I play with my family, but I think it speaks to a core value of literacy that I hope to instill in my students- what does it mean to know something in science and how can we as humans critically receive the constant input of information and experiences and discern the logical conclusions.  Because this is such a fluid goal, I want to support scientific literacy in many ways in the hopes that scientific practices can become habits of mind for my students and thus prepare them to interpret future scientific experiences.  I will do this by encouraging inquiry, challenging their constructs, and providing opportunities for exploration and discovery through modeling and field experience. 

            Media and representations will be extremely valuable in student’s experiences with exploration and discovery, which will in turn support their scientific literacy.  Having a visual or tangible shared experience/model can help ground student’s understanding of concepts and create authentic moments for students to fully engage and understand how science is done.  I definitely want to incorporate physical and computational modeling into my classroom.  I like the modeling cycle because it allows students to experience so many elements of actual scientific practice, which means it will ultimately benefit their scientific literacy.  I think the modeling cycle is just a jumping off point though, and can be implemented creatively like in the SURGE games and incorporated in both small and large scale inquiries.  For example, in a unit on evolution, students can play with a model for population bottleneck by placing different numbers of colored m and ms into a bottle and testing hypotheses for the result of a ‘bottleneck’ event and also use a computational model like peppered moth vimap program to explore the ideas more deeply.