TEACHING SCIENCE IN WINTER
Teacher Background
Winter science is the study of the physical aspects of winter -- cold, wind, snow and ice -- and the adaptations of plants and animals to winter. This is not a new and separate discipline; rather, it is an integral aspect of general environmental science that is important wherever snow and ice cover is persistent. Consequently, winter science is pertinent to the northern half of the United States, Alaska and Canada (see Figure 1), and anywhere temperate grassland, temperate deciduous forest, taiga or tundra is found throughout the world.
Although cold weather predominates during the school year in these regions, teachers rarely take advantage of winter time resources outside the classroom for instruction of science concepts and principles. Field activities are usually confined to the warm weather of early fall and late spring. The lack of field activities in winter causes a hiatus that adversely affects science teaching. Students become excited about environmental science during fall field trips, but momentum is lost, and often cannot be regained, when field activities resume in spring.
Fig 1. US Dept of Agriculture, 1941. 1941 Yearbook of Agriculture: Climate and Man, Superintendent of Documents, 1248 pp.
Organization of Winter Science Curriculum Project (WSCP) Materials
WSCP activities focus on 39 field-tested topics that you may want to include in your curriculum. We certainly do not expect that you will use all of the activities in introductory science courses. The selection of just a few, maybe only one or two this winter, and several next year, will help maintain enthusiasm for science all year.
For more specialized courses, such as field biology or environmental science, a block of activities may be selected, thereby covering many aspects of the winter scene. Other instructors may choose those best done in winter camping programs. Teachers who field-tested these materials have used the WSCP materials in some creative ways. One teacher used the activities as the focus for several science club meetings. Another allowed students in a class on scientific research methods to explore a topic in depth, with one student summarizing his investigations in a thorough report.
Regardless of the number of activities performed, students will learn to value our winter season more highly. Through a greater understanding of the effects of the winter season, students can learn to appreciate the adaptations of organisms and man to the changing seasons. The attitude that winter is a terrible season can be modified to one of valuing the cold weather. The activities will help students gain in knowledge and improve attitudes concerning the winter season.
Winter science activities could be taught by focusing only on the external environment, as is done in some ecological camping programs. Alternatively, it could focus on that which can only be learned from books or in laboratories. For most students, a combination of those environments is usually a superior approach. Understanding the relevance of concepts becomes maximally internalized when related to actual data collected in real situations. Therefore, most of the WSCP activities begin with the gathering of real data, either collected in the field or with materials obtained in the field. Subsequent work in the laboratory, library, and classroom serves to develop conceptual understanding concerning the activity. These procedures help students to visualize the relationship between the real world and the world of ideas. For example, chemistry is usually taught with only minor references to problems relating to real data. The activity on acid snow is one that involves a meaningful problem that is frequently in the news.
Some of the WSCP activities are descriptive in nature; they serve to acquaint the student with basic concepts. Other activities go beyond description into investigation of problems of real significance to scientists. In these, students can catch the experience of being involved in realistic investigations. As in real situations, often there is not any one correct answer.
An unusual aspect of many of the WSCP investigations is the inclusion of the PREDICTION section near the start of the activity. Forming predictions is an important part of hypothesis testing in research investigations, a part of the scientific process that is accessible to young people. Usually, student predictions will be based on content materials covered in class or on the students' own life experiences. In other cases they will be merely guesses that serve to organize students' thoughts concerning the research problem. We encourage you to have students make these guesses. The act of predicting serves to heighten anticipation concerning the outcomes of the activity. In addition, predictions serve as useful foci for subsequent discussion concerning the significance of the investigation.
All of these investigations contain a series of questions under the heading of DISCUSSION. It should be emphasized that the intent of these questions is to conduct classroom discussions about significant ideas. In real life, discussing results is an important activity in the scientific community. These questions should serve as the focus of this important activity.
Discussion questions are especially successful when teachers have students respond briefly to each item in writing, permitting them to clarify their own ideas about each question. This practice should be followed by a group or whole class discussion about the items. Small groups are effective when interesting questions serve to specify the task unambiguously. After discussion, complete answers can be written for the laboratory report.
FORMAT OF WSCP MATERIALS
In order to decide which activities fit best into your science program, please read the CAPSULE SUMMARIES at the beginning of this book. This section contains a concise description of each activity, with appropriate grade level and relevant topics identified. Preparation for some winter activities needs to occur prior to freezing weather. When this is required, it is noted in the SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS section of the capsule summaries. This section also alerts you to unusual materials and habitats that may be required to do some activities. For example, in "Tree Trunks and Telephone Poles", dendrometers are required but are not available commercially. Parts will need to be ordered and the dendrometers constructed.
Each investigation contains three parts: the student activity handout, the teacher guide and background material for the teacher. The STUDENT HANDOUT gives directions to the student for carrying out the activity. It is in a format that permits it to be duplicated easily. The TEACHER GUIDE is keyed directly to the student activity handout. It contains information to facilitate carrying out the activity and also includes answers to the discussion questions, where possible.
In many cases, TEACHER BACKGROUND materials are also included. Realizing that many teachers are unfamiliar with winter phenomena, the authors have written material that will help teachers to understand the materials more fully. In a some cases, the elementary nature of the investigation has made this section unnecessary.
The WSCP activities usually contain the following sections:
Detailed steps for completing each investigation are given in the PROCEDURE section. We encourage teachers to wean their students away from these detailed steps and allow students to develop their own procedures. When you think your students are in a position to design their own experiments it is easy to make a copy of the laboratory investigation page(s) with the procedure section omitted.
DISCUSSIONS
Studies of middle school and high school science conducted at the State University of New York at Oswego have revealed that real discussions tend to be rare. Most teacher-student interaction tends to be memory level in the form of recitation. This is unfortunate because research has revealed that students retain knowledge longer when instruction is carried out at higher cognitive levels. A barrier to conduct good discussions has in the past been the lack of meaningful, interesting and relevant topics. The inclusion of the prediction and discussion questions in the WSCP materials is intended to help teachers center the outcomes of investigations at the higher levels.
It has also been found twice as many questions are asked of boys as compared to girls. Therefore, teachers need to be careful to include both girls and boys equally. Try not to pair girls with boys in the laboratory. Frequently male students will conduct the experiment while female students are relegated to clean-up chores. Since girls usually have not had the spontaneous science experiences boys have had, they may become intimidated by mixed sex competition. These techniques and others such as avoiding sexist language can help promote sex equity and may even lead to more females choosing science careers.
Another important practice in promoting good science discussions is the use of adequate wait time. It has been found that students answer their teachers' questions in an average time of 1.25 seconds. After a student answers, teachers reply in 0.55 seconds. Thus, little thinking time is permitted in most classroom discussions. Longer wait time in discussions -- around 3 seconds -- results in more higher level questions being used, longer student answers, more student participation, and improved achievement. There are several other practices that lead to more productive discussions. The usual classroom arrangement of straight rows places all students in the position of talking exclusively to the front of the room and some students talking to the backs of heads. Try to use a circular arrangement to encourage dialogue. Attempt to avoid evaluative comments in discussions. Once a student is told that an answer is correct, there is no reason for other students to participate in the interaction. Neutral comments, such as "That's interesting" , or "Can someone add to that?", encourage others to participate.
Through these techniques -- different room arrangements, including both sexes equally, using through-provoking questions, and observing adequate wait time -- teachers can conduct discussions that are enjoyable and worthwhile for all. Students will see science as an exciting, investigative process. Teachers can rid themselves of daily boredom as they become involved with students in exploring new ideas. The thrill of discovery can be felt in these dynamic classrooms.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The staff of the Winter Science Curriculum Project would like to thank the teachers from schools throughout the United States and Canada for their help in field testing these investigations. . The activities and teacher background materials were also reviewed by a variety of scientists for content accuracy. Reviewers included Dr. Warren Abrahamson (Bucknell University), Dr. Richard Brewer (Western Michigan University), Dr. James Halfpenny (Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research, University of Colorado), Dr. William Kaufman, (University of Wisconsin at Green Bay), Dr. Peter Marchand (University of Arizona), Dr. Sigurd Nelson (SUNY Oswego) and Mr. Mark Wysocki (Cornell University). The suggestions and encouragement of both teachers and scientists were invaluable. We hope they enjoyed testing and reviewing the WSCP activities as much as we enjoyed developing them.
To each of you who participated in field-testing or reviewing the WSCP materials, we give our heartfelt thanks.