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

Have you ever wondered about the miracle of plants? Scientists have studied plants for years and have discovered the unique characteristics various diversities of plants offer our world, including why humans need them for survival. In this presentation, teachers will discover similar patterns plants and humans need to live. Then, using the information they gathered, they will investigate why and how plants affect human existence. Teachers will learn how to use their knowledge from this session to teach this phenomenon to their students.
The presentation uses Strand K.2: Living things and their surroundings, Strand 1.2: The needs of living things and their offspring, and Strand 2.2: Living things and their habitats. We will focus on patterns, structure, function, communication, and investigation.

One of the biggest challenges facing our students today is the amount of misinformation and disinformation that they are faced with each day. Science is the perfect subject to teach students information and media literacy so that they can use critical thinking and skepticism to be better prepared. We will be going over different research proven methods and lesson ideas to teach students about information and media literacy in your classes using the Utah SEEd Standards and 3D Science.

The teacher’s role in the classroom is to motivate students to learn. Curiosity is an important and useful tool for teaching science. Teachers can develop effective strategies with the SEEd Standards to leverage curiosity that motivates students to read, engage in discourse, and write .

Good science instruction can motivate students to develop literacy skills. Building literacy skills in our students is an important tool for learning science. Scientific investigation effectively motivates students to develop better reading comprehension, build skills for engaging in evidence-based discourse, and improve writing skills (NRC, 2019).

Students enter the classroom with diverse abilities, needs, and backgrounds. Selecting and using local and culturally relevant phenomena is an important way to engage all science investigations. Making connections to place-based aspects of science phenomena adds to the relevance of science for each student and motivates students to engage in discourse, reading, and writing.

Resources:

i-Tree
Not Even Past: Social Vulnerability and the Legacy of Redlining
Urban Heat Island Story Map
National Phenology Network


Practices: My presentation will describe the 2023 Heat Mapping Campaign in Salt Lake City funded by NOAA. Scientists designed routes and modeling methods, and volunteers attached mobile sensors to their cars and drove the routes. In class, students use Infrared thermometers to map the heat island effect around their campus.

Crosscutting Concepts: Our results revealed that historically redlined neighborhoods on the Westside experience a greater heat burden than other neighborhoods. Our results will improve our ability to build effective heat mitigating infrastructure like trees and cool roofs.

Core Ideas: In studying the urban heat island effect, students learn that the Earth’s surface absorbs or reflects solar radiation. When the surface absorbs solar energy, heat is transferred by conduction, convection, evaporation, and emission. Human bodies respond to heat with perspiration and vasodilation. Heat waves are becoming more common and more severe, and the burden of risk is not equally shared.