UtSTA 2024: Out-Of-This-World Science Teaching

Outdoor education offers students an incredible environment to learn and grow, but connecting students to these programs isn't always simple. Canyonlands Field Institute is researching what barriers might exist between students and quality environmental education, starting with the teachers who know them best. There is a 3-minute survey for folks to fill out and CFI representatives to chat with teachers about their experiences. 

You're a good teacher, so why aren't they learning? For a lot of kids, it's because they learned in elementary school that 'learning' means to memorize. Spelling words, times tables, paragraphs about lake Bonneville- they don't know what any of it means, but knew they had to memorize to get good grades. Now their secondary teachers say "Go home and Study" meaning "Make this make sense and understand it." but what the kids hear is "Go home and memorize this." because that's all 'studying' has ever meant to them.

This leads to test anxiety in the good memorizers ("Will the test be written like I memorized it?!), demoralization among those who don't memorize well ("I get bad grades no matter how hard I try so I must be dumb."), and apathy about most of school in secondary ("This is so dumb. When am ever going to use this information that I'm just going to forget after the test anyway?")

For many students, all that is needed is directing them away from memorization and teaching them how to understand- which involves making connections and understanding subjects rather than trying to retain a bunch of unrelated facts. This mini session will include some sample concept maps and a sample lesson on density that helps kids confront the misconception that "Heat rises". Understanding molecular motion changes their perspective to "Gravity pulls harder on more dense things". After making this jump, they can then be guided to explain how hot air balloons rise, why breezes on the beach are predictable and reverse every day, how the continents move, why ice keeps your whole drink cold, and several more phenomena. The way you know if you're succeeding is when the kids say "Ohhh! That makes sense!" This lab can help you walk through that with your own kids.