Nismec News

Issue 2.1 March 2006

The Northern Indiana Science, Mathematics and Engineering Collaborative
NISMEC \| ND Outeach \| School Districts -> Mishawaka \| New Prairie \| South Bend \| Elkhart \| John Glenn \| PHM \|

Contents
Introductory Note
News
HASTI 2006
Elementary schools

Mishawaka

Inventions
Middle schools
Summer Programs

HPS workshop
Other News

ISEF-INTEL
Recent articles
Editorial info

Guided Inquiry is our Focus

2006
A Year for Science and Education Collaborations

Introductory Note

This is the first NISMEC newsletter of our second year: we report news and events most relevant to educators and friends of educators in Northern Indiana; our mission is to publicize important events and news in the world of inquiry based learning in science, mathematics and engineering at all grade levels K-12, college and graduate work. Relevant national and international news, programs, and other internet publications is also included.

News

The timing for the Indiana ISTEP exams is still under examination. After the initial suggestions by the Governor and his collegues to move all ISTEP texts from Fall to Spring, our legislators in Indianapolis have moved towards a more thoughtful bill giving the State Board of Education till October 1, 2006 to develop a long-range plan: the latest information indicates that some but not all ISTEP tests will move to the Spring, but final decisions will be made in further consultations with the Board of Education staff. The Senate's adjustments to the bill still need approval by the House of Representatives. For further information, you can read Secretary of Education Suellen Reed's

recent (March 1st) press release.

Return to top

NISMEC's strong presence at HASTI 2006:

The Hoosier Association
of Science Teachers, Inc

The annual meeting took place in Indianapolis 8-10 February 2006: a triple-sized booth housed our joint programs of Quarknet, JINA, Saint Mary's and NISMEC; several presentations from NISMEC associates were given. These included a very busy first day on the Wednesday with three- and four-hour workshops led by Joseph Bellina (Saint Marys) and Karen Morris (Notre Dame), in the morning on "Up Close and Personal Learning - by Guided Inquiry" (four hours), and in the afternoon Professor Bellina led the discussion on "Assessment and the RTOP protocol"(three hours).

The figure shows the booth ready for visitors...

Kent Mikel, Discovery Middle School, preparing for the workshop.

Return to top

Elementary School Programs

The School City of Mishawaka Mathematics and Science Partnership Program Indiana K-6 Initiative
The State of Indiana Education Department awarded $420,000 for a 3-year professional development of all K-6 teachers School City of Mishawaka(SCM) almost a year ago (May 2005) as part of their ongoing collaboration with NISMEC to bring guided inquiry science to all their class-rooms.
Summer 2005
Following the initial pilot program of the previous summer with the Beiger and Twin Branch elementary school teachers, and the pilot implementation in the Beiger schools in the 2004-05 school year, the teachers from all the other Mishawaka schools attended Professor Joseph Bellina's week-long TSIs (Teacher Science Institutes)at Saint Mary's College in groups of 15 to 25 throughout the summer of 2005. Other members of the TSI I team were Karen Morris, Helene Dauerty from St. Joseph High School in South Bend, and Shirley Dorbin. In addition, the Beiger teachers attended a weeklong TSI-2, as a follow-on professional development workshop. This very busy summer of six weeks of workshops for more than 100 teachers involved a lot of careful planning, especially on the parts of Karen Morris (at Notre Dame and Saint Mary's) and of Carolyn Freeman and Bob Remenih at SCM.

Here are some pictures of one week's TSI teachers at play (and work)....

"The circuit lights the bulb"	"Bellina checks the Notebooking..."
"A very large light bulb!"	"Watching a teacher present.."

The classroom hands-on science programs use modular science materials coming initially from

FOSS,

The school year 2005-6

• Throughout the school year, the initial FOSS modules have been successfully implemented in the classrooms in all seven elementary schools in all grades K-6.
• Delivery, replenishment, and storage problems have been solved.
• Support for the teachers in the classrooms continues to be provided with help from Notre Dame and Saint Marys, and with several planned inservices.
• Regular assessment visits by Professor Kitty Green of Saint Marys are underway.
• The Coordinating committee for the program meets on a monthly basis to monitor progress, and plan for the coming summer.

Liberty School entrance

Here we see student enthusiasm for science
in a Twin Branch Elementary School classroom...

Twin Branch twirlers - 1

Twin Branch twirlers - 2

The Beiger School 3rd Grade Invention Convention

Science is taking hold at the Mishawaka School City Beiger Elementary School! The enthusiastic third graders held a wildly successful "Invention Convention", with their products being displayed for all to see in the school's upstairs hallway. We show a few of the displays below - proud parents were able to check out the wild ideas of their children, and some are thinking in terms of future patents - perhaps science learning will bring some financial returns in the future, not just for the families, but also for Beiger school!

"Friendship boat" & "Confetti blaster"	"The pirate ship" & "The straw house"
"The Caterpillar express" & "Do not do drugs"	"Our wish kite", "Toy car" & "The Titanic"

Return to top

Middle School Programs

The format of the Notre Dame one-month summer workshop for 2005 consisted of 1 month's focus in guided inquiry, consisting principally of three parts linked together by the use of guided inquiry and the connections between middle school requirements of mathematics and science: these three parts were:

Middle school mathematics problems in the 7th and 8th grades, led by Professor Mario Borelli, of the Notre Dame Mathematics Department.
The Size and Scale of Everything - Measurements in astronomy and astrophysics, led by Professor Philip Sakimoto of the Notre Dame Physics Department.
Guided Inquiry Learning in Physical Science for the 7th and 8th grade, led by Professor Gordon Berry of the Notre Dame Physics Department.

Ten teachers attended the workshop from the three neighboring school districts of PHM (Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation), Mishawaka (Mishawaka School City), and South Bend (South Bend Community School Corporation).

Cheryl Nix(SB) & Mark Baldwin(PHM)	Megan O'Connell(SB), Madeleine Martinez(SB), Kent Mikel(PHM), Patricia Chrenka(SB) & Beth Ann Reed(SB, now Turkey)
Jon Creakbaum(PHM), Beth Albright(SB) & Courtney Bulger(Mishawaka)	Madeleine Martinez(SB) & Megan O'Connell(SB)

Contacts have continued with and between the teachers - with classroom visits by Gordon Berry and Phil Sakimoto; unfortunately, only email contact has been possible with Beth Anne, who is teaching for a year at an American base in Turkey; the group also presented a workshop at HASTI this February(see above); Kent Mikel will be helping in our second middle school workshop to be held in June-July this summer (see below for details).

An "incident" in a Mishawaka middle-school classroom

Laura Dorbin's students at John Young Middle-school in Mishawaka were confronted with a comatose lady near their lab benches when they came to class one day last semester. After the dazed lady recovered sufficiently to go to see the school nurse, they spent the class-time honing their detective skills to work out what had happened...

Happily the patient fully recovered, even after undergoing the incident several times within the same day. Apparently the school nurse is a wonder-worker!

[The visiting investigator was Karen Morris, the unfortunate lab assistant was Shirley Dorbin].

Return to top

Summer Programs at Notre Dame and Saint Marys

Research Experiences for High School Teachers at Notre Dame (RET)

In 2006, the University of Notre Dame continues to expand its RET program to bring research opportunities in many science areas, including physics, chemistry, biological sciences, engineering, geosciences, nanotechnology, and mathematics. The projects vary in duration from 4 to 8 weeks and the stipends for participating teachers range from $1,500 to $5,000. The RET program is supported through the National Science Foundation and the University of Notre Dame. It has operated very successfully at Quarknet for several years in high energy and other experimental physics projects.

More information about the program can be found at the

RET website.

Teacher Science Institutes (TSI) at Saint Marys (K-6th grade)
Professor Joseph Bellina and his group will be conducting 1 TSI I and 6 week-long TSI II's this summer 2005 for the MishawakaK-6 teachers. The TSI II II will provide the opportunity for teachers to reflect on what happened as they led their students' learning in science through discussions with the other teachers at their grade level. We will have time to share and explore many of the ideas teachers had, the challenges encountered, and successes experienced as teachers worked with the FOSS kits for the first time. By sharing experiences, teachers will guide each other in developing and refining those skills that will support the next phase of the implementation. By reflecting on the module structures teachers will gain more insight into the storyline of each module, and be better prepared to engage their students in their learning, and make better use of the literacy strand." They will take place most weeks (Mondays to Fridays), starting in mid June. The TSI I focuses more on the introduction of guided inquiry learning into the classroom. They introduce participants to the well-established, research-based curriculum (Physics by Inquiry, by L.C. McDermott and the PER group at the University of Washington). Further information can be found on the NISMEC website.
Each workshop has an enrollment of 12 to 24 participants, and teachers are paid a stipend ($500) for the one week of attendance. With the introduction of "guided inquiry" into the Mishawaka K-6 curriculum, these many workshops will be filled with Mishawaka K-6 teachers. We anticipate that funds will be available for similar TSI workshops the following year. If you and/or your school would be interested in such workshops in the summer of 2007, please contact Professor Joseph Bellina (jbellina@saintmarys.edu) or Karen Morris (kmorris@nd.edu) for further details.

Return to top

Summer program for Middle school teachers at Notre Dame

With the support of the Siemens Foundation, the University of Notre Dame is holding a 4-week summer 2006 workshop for 7th and 8th grade middle school science teachers: the program (from mid June to mid July 2006) will focus on how to use guided inquiry in the science classroom; a preliminary program follows:

Week 1	-- Introduction and learning about guided inquiry; examples of GI classrooms, invited speakers
Weeks 2 & 3	-- Guided inquiry lessons in motion and forces, optics, and astrophysics; especially including summaries and analysis of their effectiveness in the classrooms
Weeks 3 & 4	-- Development of guided inquiry modules which the teachers will use in the coming classroom year.

Among the support systems to be introduced will be included:

The

PIPS (Powerful Ideas in Physical Science)

Physics by Inquiry

Real Time Physics

hgberry@nd.edu

kmikel@phm.k12.in.us

Return to top

The Quarknet and JINA Programs

These two outreach programs in the Physics Department at Notre Dame both participate in the High School teacher RET programs mentioned above; they also have several other ongoing programs linking teachers and students at several K-12 levels with Notre Dame physics research. The focus of Quarknet is in high energy physics, giving high school teachers the opportunity to do summer research and also to network together with throughout the school year. JINA (The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics) has a wide range of programs to help students and teachers at all K-12 (and other) grade levels: their programs include minigrants, fieldtrips, workshops and support for art in science.
More information regarding summer programs can be found on their websites:
Quarknet:

http://www.nd.edu/~quarknet/
JINA Outreach: http://www.jinaweb.org/html/jinaprograms.html

History and Philosophy of Science Courses at Notre Dame for High School Teachers
Two intensive one-week classes are being offered June 26-30, 2006 by the University of Notre Dame Graduate program in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). The courses are HPS 63721 "The Darwinian Revolution" and HPS 63772 "Curie, Carson and Franklin: Women and the Nature of Science".
The program is appropriate for secondary science and mathematics teachers and provides exposure to historical and philosophical issues that can be used to enrich and deepen discussions in both historical and modern contexts.

Charles Darwin

Marie Curie

The first course studies the birth and development of evolutionary biology, exploring the contributions of Darwin, Huxley, Lamarck, Lyell, Mendel, Morgan and others. The second course addresses the often under-appreciated role of women such as Marie Curie, Rachel Carson and Rosalind Franklin have played in the history of science.
Application forms and more information about this program can be found at the HPS website for the program or by email at ndhpssum@nd.edu.

Return to top

Other News and Items of Interest

ETHOS - Encouraging Technology and Hands On Science
The Elkhart Community schools and ETHOS also received a State of Indiana Science Partnership grant in 2005 (

$510,000 for three years)

ETHOS has a series of summer programs in June 2006 for 3rd, 6th and 8th graders in Elkhart.

Patsy Boehler, Director of ETHOS has put together a very helpful K-8 curriculum guide linking "inquiry-centered science curriculum units" with the Indiana science standards. With her permission, we reproduce her "Curriculum Framework" table below:

Curriculum Framework

Grading Period/ Grade	Grading Period 1	Grading Period 2	Grading Period 3	Grading Period 4
Kindergarten	Wood and Paper (FOSS)	Animals Two by Two (FOSS)
First	Comparing and Measuring (STC)	Solids and Liquids (FOSS)	Insects (FOSS)	New Plants (FOSS)
Second	Balance and Motion (FOSS)	Changes (STC)	Soils (STC)	Air and Weather (FOSS)
Third	Measurement (FOSS)	Sound (STC)	Structures of Life (FOSS)	Water (FOSS)
Fourth	Magnetism and Electricity (FOSS)	Microworlds (STC)	Food Chemistry (STC)	Earth Materials (FOSS)
Fifth	Models and Design (FOSS)	Mixtures and Solutions (FOSS)	Landforms (FOSS)	Environments (FOSS)
Sixth Health Teacher	Earth in Space Exploring the Solar System (SEPUP) Food and Nutrition (FOSS)	Diversity of Life (FOSS)	Chem 2 (SEPUP)	Weather and Atmosphere (SEPUP)
Seventh Health Teacher	Rocks and Minerals (SEPUP) My Body and Me (SEPUP)	Shaping the Land, Fruitvale, Plate Tectonics (SEPUP)	Energy, Machines, and Motion (STC)	Micro Life (SEPUP)
Eighth Health Teacher	Materials (SEPUP) Human Brain and Senses (FOSS)	Ecology and Evolution (SEPUP)	Force and Motion Investigating Energy from the Sun (SEPUP)	Genetics (SEPUP)

http://www.ethosinc.org/programs.html?id=11

(FOSS): http://www.fossweb.com/

(STC): http://www.carolina.com/stc/

(SEPUP): http://www.sepup.com/index.htm

"Notre Dame Clear Domes"
New experiments for your class!!
Last summer's middle-school program included studies of the reflections and refractions of laser light in a semicircular piece of plexiglass.

- We (Gordon Berry of Notre Dame and Kent Mikel of Discovery Middle-School, Penn-Harris-Madison) included them in a workshop at this year's HASTI meeting in Indianapolis last month. Since most of the workshop participants wanted the domes to use in their own class-rooms, we have persuaded the Physics Department Machine shop to make extras, so that we can sell them to you at cost. The pieces can be used at all grades, Middle School through High School and College. In more advanced classes they can be used to make quantitative measurements of the angles of reflection and refraction, learn about "refractive index",and to test Snell's law.
They work well with narrow beam white light sources, but especially with lasers of any color, red or green. The domes are half an inch thick, with a diameter of 4 inches, and all sides are polished. Our administrative assistant came up with the name "ND Clear Dome", to distinguish it from Notre Dame's "golden dome". (For a small extra charge, we can add a gold coating!)
Ordering "Clear Domes"
Our pricing is $5 for one, ($5 times N for N<15), $75 for 25, including postage - please send a check made out to The Physics Department of Notre Dame at the following address: Professor Gordon Berry, Physics Department NSH 225, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN 46556. Include your own shipping address - shipping (by USPS priority) will be within a few days.
Lasers are most easily purchased from The Laser Guy at

http://thelaserguy.com

Return to top

Not Intelligent Design, nor Flying Spagetti Monsters..
We are all grateful to the intelligent judge who presided in Philapelphia over the Dover Schools court case where the school board members were trying to propagate hearsay against scientific facts. Shortly after the trial, the local voters made their decision known also, sweeping the Dover ID incumbents from school-board office. Hurrah for Darwin, his theory and his successors in the scientific community.
The events are a powerful reminder of what a theory really is: hearsay and hypothesis must be tested before becoming theory. Guided inquiry techniques in the classroom are used to provide hands-on tests of proven scientific theories; they also enable the students to remove and replace their own initial wrong ideas; Darwinian theory has been tested time and again, turning it into a true THEORY.
A less serious, but potent example from "The Philadelphia Inquirer" newspaper shows how good teachers should be able to trust their students to reach the right conclusions:

There remain pockets of resistance to the Darwinian theory of evolution, even in Indiana: the Bluffton-Harrison Metropolitan School District (just south of Fort Wayne) board has reportedly

discussed teaching alternatives. Its directions to science teachers specifically mention intelligent design.

check here!

Return to top

Learning to read and learning science: right ways and wrong ways
The whole November/December 2005 issue of

NSTA's journal for elementary teachers, Science and Children, was devoted to "writing to learn science". Of course, this is complementary to our normal view that Guided Inquiry in the science classroom leads to advances in reading and writing! Sure enough, just a look at the titles of the articles, indicates how many ways science learning can provide support for reading:

Science Notebook Essentials by Michael Klentschy.

Five good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks by Joan Gilbert and Marlene Kotelman.

Mystery Box Writing by William Straits. I saw an effective use of this technique recently in the classroom of Beth Albright at LaSalle Intermediate Center, South Bend

Science the "Write" Way by Valarie Akerson and Terrell Young.

Ecosystem Journalism by Amy robertson and Kathryn Mahlin.

Learning Logs: Writing to Learn, Reading to Assess by Daniel Heuser.
If you are a member of NSTA, you can see the articles in their archive; otherwise, it is strongly recommended that you find the copy of a friend or check the school library - MUST reading for all K-6 teachers who want to improve reading scores and science scores at the same time!

[Also note that the November/December 2004 issue of Science and Children also contains 3 valuable articles on "Writing to Learn Science": The first article, "Making Thinking Visible" by Roxanne Greitz Miller and Robert C. Calfee discusses graphic response organizers, great tools that I use even in introductory college classes.]

      Unfortunately, these effective techniques must be contrasted with other developments in reading requirements and testing in the early grades: "The No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002, established Reading First as a new, high-quality evidence-based program for the students of America" (part of the introduction to the U.S. Department of Education's Reading First program).
This could be an effective program for early reading, especially since there is some (not a lot) of federal money available. However, States that have been applying for such Federal funds have run into roadblocks, especially if their proposals do not consider particular reading program support coming from DIBELS, and its associates.
      What is DIBELS, you might ask? DIBELS (The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a University of Oregon based company with a focus on using phonics, and only phonics to help early (mostly K-3, but also some tests up to 6th grade) readers, and to provide testing for those readers. I quote from the official DIBELS web page "DIBELS are a set of standardized, individually administered measures of early literacy development. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills." The focus of this program solely on phonics has led people to point out that this develops "speed reading without comprehension".
      The Education Board of the State of Indiana has thankfully rejected this process, regarding "reading with understanding" as being a key. This principle matches the ideas behind science notebooks and most non-fiction reading-for-learning systems. Under the pressure for US government support, many other States have taken up the DIBELS programs, including Texas, Florida, Washington, Kentucky, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Illinois. In Chicago, teachers have been issued "palm-pilots" to keep track of the students' DIBELS tests (not paid for by the Federal funding). Weaknesses deriving from the narrowness of this phonics-based program are becoming clear: see, for example, comments from many teachers being submitted to the DIBELS Clearinghouse section of Susan Ohanian's website http://vsse.net/dibels/.
      An even more serious failing is the pressure from the Federal Government to guide State schools to use a specific program. An article by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo in NSTA's Education Week entitled "States Pressed to Refashion Reading First Grant Designs: Documents Suggest Federal Interference". lays out the case against the "Federal armtwisting" taking place during several of the State negotiations.

[Note: NSTA members can read the archived version. But the article is freely available at NABE (the National Assoication for Bilingual Education).]
I quote here a short section from the article:

A number of state and district officials, publishers, and critics have charged that federal officials and consultants have overstepped the federal Reading First initiative’s authority by:
• Pressing states to use certain consultants and professional-development advisers;
• Directing state officials to alter their choice of assessments, in some cases requiring a state legislative change or waiver;
• Requiring applicants to use specific approaches for evaluating core reading programs;
• Judging state applications inconsistently and holding different states to different standards; and
• Giving preference to some publishers by providing extra support materials aligned to a handful of reading programs.

We are not surprised to find that the University of Oregon DIBELS originators were close consultants with the White House during formulation of the "Reading First" program, and also continue to have significant consulting contacts (contracts?) with the U.S. Department of Education.

Return to top

ASU Graduate Program for High School Physics Teachers

If you want to go somewhere warm for the summer, try this: Arizona State University offers High school teachers the chance to take its well-recognized peer-led modeling workshops:

"Most are 3-week workshops that thoroughly treat the pedagogy and content for the mechanics portion of a physics course. Content is reorganized around basic models to increase its structural coherence. Participants are supplied with a complete set of course materials and work through activities alternately in the roles of student or teacher."

You can find further information at their

website: http://modeling.asu.edu/MNS/MNS.html.

The 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

"The 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Is Coming To Indianapolis May 7-13, 2006 at the Indianapolis Convention Center

The 2006 Intel ISEF will be hosted by the Science Education Foundation of Indiana and the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association. The competition will attract 1,400 top science and technology high school students representing the 46 U.S. states and 40 global countries, territories, and regions. Visiting Indianapolis for the first time with the students will be their science advisors and parents. The event will also attract 1,200 expert judges and a panel of Nobel Laureates, building an attendance of 5,000 enthusiasts for celebrating the recent discoveries of tomorrow’s youthful leaders."

You can find further information at their website: http://www.intelisef2006.org/.

Return to top

Recent Articles of Interest

The National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators (SEI)

SEI (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/front/about.htm)

Elementary and Secondary Education
Higher Education in Science and Engineering
Science and Engineering Labor Force
Research and Development: Funds and Technology Linkages
Academic Research and Development
Industry, Technology, and the Global Marketplace
Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding
State Indicators

NSF website (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/)

Return to top
Editorial information, etc.

The NISMEC electronic newsletter will be published at regular intervals throughout the school year. If you wish to be a subscriber (it's free), write/send your email address to the editor, Gordon Berry, at the address:

nismec@nd.edu

Do you have any contributions for future newsletters?
Do you have any ideas for improving future newsletters?
Do you know of any articles that would be of interest to readers of future newsletters?
Contact us at nismec@nd.edu

.........mathematics, engineering and the other sciences too!

Return to top

NISMEC News

Return to NISMEC:

2006 A Year for Science and Education Collaborations

2006
A Year for Science and Education Collaborations