Chemistry for Everyone edited by
Chemistry for Kids
John T. Moore Stephen F. Austin State University Nacogdoches, TX 75962
CHEM 101: Thirty Years of Experiences with a Chemistry Course for Prospective Elementary School Teachers
David Tolar R. C Fisher School Athens, TX 75751
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Donald B. Phillips Department of Chemistry, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197;
[email protected] Overview Many outreach programs for children and in-service activities for elementary school teachers have been described in this Journal. However, few articles have described complete undergraduate courses and programs that provide science content and science teaching methodology for future teachers (1–3). This article describes a chemistry course at Eastern Michigan University designed for future elementary school teachers. More than 500 students per year are currently enrolled in our Chem 101 course. Chem 101 is part of a package of four science courses required of students in our elementary education program. Teaching methodology is integrated into each of the four courses; no additional science methods course is needed. Chem 101 is three semester credits and includes two hours of lecture and a two-hour laboratory per week for a 15-week semester. The laboratory is moderately discovery based. The use of mathematics and quantitative aspects also is at a moderate level. Most experiments are written in the form of three or four closely related activities, at least one of which is easily adaptable to the elementary school classroom. History and Development In 1973, the science and science education requirements for future elementary school teachers at Eastern Michigan University consisted of two science courses from different departments and a separate science methods course. The methods course often was taken as much as three years after the content courses and was not connected directly to the content of these courses. Moreover, the menu of science courses consisted of introductory content courses usually taken by a variety of students to meet our basic studies requirement, and not at all designed to meet the needs of the future teacher. Most students took introductory biology and earth science. Few selected chemistry or physics. The source that guided the development of our original Chem 101 course more than any other source is Preservice Science Education of Elementary School Teachers (4). Buried in an appendix was an extensive list of specific objectives related to the composition, characteristics, and structure of matter. It had been placed there to flesh out the more general statements and guidelines presented in the body of that publication. The material in that appendix was very germane to my needs. I set out to design a laboratory course that would develop competence in as many of these areas as was reason-
able. This was the basis for the first iteration of the laboratory course, and is still the framework for our current course, both laboratory and lecture. We soon approved the following science education sequence for all future elementary school teachers: Physics 100, Chemistry 101, Earth Science 202, and Elementary Science 303 (Biology). All were three-credit courses, and the new program required the same number of credits as the previous one. We broke with tradition in specifying this sequence, as it probably is the reverse of the order in which students would elect to take the courses. We believe the principles of physics are the most basic of all the sciences and therefore should come first. Many of the physics principles lead naturally into chemistry. The language and some of the content of chemistry lead naturally into earth science, especially the chemical aspects of that discipline. The biology course is placed last for two reasons. First, biology is the most complex of all of the sciences because it deals with living, interacting organisms. Second, the teachers who had taught the previous elementary science methods course were from the Biology Department. They had many good contacts with area schools that we could continue to use. Biology would serve as our capstone course and would involve more extensive teaching experiences in actual classrooms. Having the courses in a prescribed sequence also meant the instructors could assume that students had some familiarity with certain subject matter and laboratory procedures. In another radical decision, we integrated the science content of each course with teaching methodology. Our students would not take a separate methods course later. We saw advantages in being able to take time at the appropriate moments in each course to devote attention to how to teach certain topics. Keep in mind as you read this article that Chem 101 is only one-fourth of the science education component. While the amount of methodology in any one course may not seem very extensive, we believe that the sum of it in the four courses is greater than that in one, separate, unconnected methods course that is taught at a much later date. We currently use our own text and the laboratory manual in course-pack form for the chemistry class. The text is fairly traditional in its coverage of major subjects. However, material has been carefully selected for the intended audience. We build on themes with experiments to support them: the particulate (atomic) nature of matter, the kinetic nature of matter, and the electrical nature of matter. Heavy emphasis is given to physical properties and changes, chemical properties and changes, and acid–base chemistry.
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The course, unlike some designed for the non-science student, is moderately mathematical and quantitative. We do not reduce the difficulties that many students have with mathematics by avoiding mathematics. However, numbers in quantitative problems have been simplified. If students understand the concept, they should be able to do the arithmetic in their head. For instance, students do calculations involving Avogadro’s constant, moles, and grams. We use simple multiples or fractions of Avogadro’s constant, such as 3.0 × 1023 or 6.0 × 1024. This approach is continued throughout the text for other quantitative applications. We go out of the way to involve graphing in many ways. Students draw many graphs during their laboratory work and interpret several more in the lecture portion of the course. They determine absolute zero by extrapolation of their own data. Both Boyle’s and Charles’s laws also are derived from graphical and mathematical analysis of student data. Students are introduced to competency-based learning and an alternative means of evaluating laboratory work when they have to demonstrate certain competencies and answer questions asked orally by the instructor or laboratory assistant. Examples include reciting the names and colors for the models of the elements and using ball-and-stick models to differentiate among atoms, molecules, compounds, and mixtures. Students also must receive the instructor’s approval of setups, such as an electrolysis apparatus or distillation apparatus, before they are allowed to continue their work. The course is also, to a significant extent, discovery based. The highlight of the laboratory is the development and teaching of an elementary-school chemistry lesson to a peer group. The class is divided into groups of five and each student in a group is given a different commercially available teacher’s guide or student manual for a chemistry lesson. Presentations involve five different elementary chemistry lessons. After students teach their lessons to their peer group, we bring classes of students, usually 4th or 5th graders, into our Chem 101 labs and our students again teach their prepared lessons one-on-one for a laboratory period. Students get additional practice in teaching situations in the program’s other science courses. This begins in the physics course with the presentation of simple demonstrations to peers and culminates in the biology course with extensive teaching in an elementary school classroom. We believe that it is essential for students to have multiple opportunities to make presentations, even very early in their college career. Our sequence of four science courses, each integrated with methodology, provides a gradual introduction to these teaching experiences. The original five lessons came from programs available at the time the course was developed. We used two lessons from the Elementary Science Study, Mystery Powders and Balloons and Gases, and one lesson from the Science Curriculum Improvement Study, Interaction and Systems (5– 7). Two other sets of booklets were purchased originally for our student’s use: Chemical Change from the Experiences in Science program and Chemistry Workshop 2—Understanding Mixtures (8, 9). Neither of these is currently in print, but we continue to use them because they give a good balance to our set of five experiments in terms of activities, content, and intended age level. Their activities complement the rest of our
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course and overlap minimally with our other experiments. (The emphasis of each lesson is described in the supplemental material.W) Originally, all five of the publications were available in booklet form, a feature that at the start was important to us when we had to purchase large numbers of teacher’s guides and student manuals. We selected these booklets over textbooks not only because of the cost, but because we could find in them concentrated chemistry content in a form suitable for use in Chem 101. Although two of the booklets no longer are available, there are many other current sources from which one could select suitable material for a chemistry course for future elementary school teachers. These include textbooks and laboratory manuals designed for non-science majors (10). Other good sources of activities to supplement more traditional texts and laboratory manuals include Fun with Chemistry materials from the Institute for Chemical Education (11), WonderScience magazine (12), and booklets from the Great Explorations in Math and Science Series, GEMS (13). The ACS Home Page (http://www.acs.org) contains much relevant information under sub-addresses relating to curriculum, education, and resources. The Chem 101 Faculty Chem 101 faculty have consisted of tenured and tenuretrack faculty as well as lecturers. We have also had retired or former public school teachers teach some sections. Of the ten teachers involved with teaching the course in the last two years, four were tenured or tenure-track faculty, four were lecturers, and two were lecturers who had been public school teachers. As coordinator of the course, I supply all teachers with as much material and advice as I can give to these chemiststurned-chemical-educators. Probably the best advice I can give is to encourage them to share with the students many of their own teaching strategies. For instance, while performing a demonstration, take time to talk about the characteristics of a good demonstration. Teachers describe how to make a commonly used solution, such as limewater, when it is being used in an experiment. I provide models (ball-and-stick and gumdrop), games (a jigsaw puzzle game similar to the commercially available Ion Fit CheMAG unit1) to teach formula writing, and a board game using Froot Loops to model electrons when teaching how to write electron-dot formulas (17). Our own textbook and laboratory manual also greatly assist chemistry faculty with teaching this course. Evaluation During the formative years of the elementary science program, we conducted exit interviews with a sample of students. We also received reports from the supervisors of student teachers when the students completed their student teaching. Results were positive, showing a decided preference for the sequence of science courses over the original program of two science courses with a separate methods course. A typical description of our students was that they were “ready, willing, and able to teach science.”
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Chemistry for Everyone
Student written evaluations currently evaluate the Chem 101 course every semester. Faculty are also evaluated every term according to the union contract. Tenured and tenuretrack faculty use a required written evaluation and periodically are evaluated by peers and the department head. Lecturers also must use the written evaluation, and classroom visits are conducted by the department head. Summary and Comments An undergraduate chemistry course intended for future elementary school teachers that contains integrated teaching methodology and chemistry content has been developed. It is part of a required sequence of four science courses: physics, chemistry, earth science, and biology. The program requirement assures exposure to these four major sciences. Our studies show that our students are ready, willing, and able to teach laboratory-oriented elementary school science. Perhaps the single best indicator of the success of our program is that the Elementary Science Group Minor is the most popular minor of students in the elementary education curriculum. Nearly half of our students elect this minor. W
Supplemental Material
A detailed description of the chapter content, experiment activities, and the composition of the mini-lessons is available in this issue through JCE Online. Note 1. Available from CENCO, 3300 CENCO Parkway, Franklin Park, IL 60131, and from several other laboratory suppliers.
Literature Cited 1. Duerst, M. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1990, 67, 1031–1032. 2. Jasien, P. G. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, 48. 3. Kelter, P. B.; Jacobitz, K.; Kean, E.; Hoesing, A. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 933–937. 4. AAAS Commission on Science Education. Preservice Science Education of Elementary School Teachers; Misc. Publ. 70-5; American Association for the Advancement of Science: Washington, DC, 1970. 5. Elementary Science Study. Mystery Powders; Delta Education: Hudson, NH, 1986. 6. Elementary Science Study. Balloons and Gases; Delta Education: Hudson, NH, 1985. 7. Science Curriculum Improvement Study. Interaction and Systems; Delta Education: Hudson, NH, 1988. 8. Tannenbaum, H. E.; Tannenbaum, B.; Stillman, N.; Stillman, M. Chemical Change; McGraw-Hill: St. Louis, 1967. 9. Rosen, S. Chemistry Workshop-2: Understanding Mixtures; Globe: New York, 1978. 10. Stanitski, C. L.; Eubanks, L. P.; Middlecamp, C. H.; Stratton, W. J. Chemistry in Context, 3rd ed.; McGraw-Hill: New York, 2000. 11. Fun with Chemistry, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., and Vol. 2; Institute for Chemical Education: Madison, WI, 1995 and 1993. 12. WonderScience; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, various dates. 13. Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS); Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California: Berkeley, CA, various dates. 14. Phillips, D. B. Sci. Scope 1994, 17, 30–31. 15. Intermediate Science Curriculum Study. The Natural World/2; Silver Burdett: Morristown, NJ, 1976. 16. Phillips, D. B. Sci. Teach. 1976, 43, 26–27. 17. Frentrup, J. F.; Phillips, D. B. Sci. Teach. 1996, 63, 36–38. 18. Elementary Science Study. Gases and “Airs”; Delta Education: Hudson, NH, 1987.
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