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Project-Oriented Science: A Teacher’s Guide

Publisher: Castle Heights Press, Inc. Author: Kathleen Julicher Review last updated: 2009

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Kathleen Julicher is an advocate of using projects for teaching science, but she recognizes that many children get caught up in the fun aspects of projects and fail to learn the cognitive facts or the critical thinking skills necessary to process and apply them. This book helps you successfully combine project and cognitive learning for children at almost all levels (probably about second grade and up).

While this is not a science curriculum in itself, it is a how-to book that can be used along with almost any book about "doing" science. Children will need a source for information and directions for experiments or observations, but this book tells you how to select and organize science studies and how to prepare and present individual lessons. Reproducible planning worksheets are included.

The book then tells you how to teach children to record information. There are numerous recording forms for students to use: some for labeled drawings, some for recording specific information, and some general experiment recording sheets appropriate for differing skill levels.

Key skill areas covered are drawing, taking and recording measurements, keeping records, and scientific method. Some actual lessons are included to introduce students to each of these skill areas.

I envision this book as an ideal introduction to use before getting into resources such as the Amanda Bennett Unit Study Guides that steer you toward subject specific information and ideas. If parents and children first gain experience doing this type of work through Project-Oriented Science, they will understand how to create their own recording devices when needed. Some of the reproducible recording pages could even be used to enhance experiments from books such as those by Janice Van Cleave.

Even more help is available from Castle Heights Press in the form of My First Science Notebook and My Science Notebook 2. The first book is appropriate for children in grades K-3, although young children will probably need help with reading the instructions. It walks them through activities for drawing, measuring, recording, and reporting. A list of "Classic Experiments for Young Scientists" at the back of the book suggests numerous topics that can be pursued, many of them using some of the recording pages in the Notebook.

My Science Notebook 2 is very similar but is written for students second grade and older. It covers drawing, classification, measuring and charting, observing, and scientific method. This is intended to be the student's personal workbook, so, while pages are reproducible (for your family only), each student should have his or her own copy.

Both Notebooks have some content overlap with Project-Oriented Science, which is intended to be the teacher's guide. While the Notebooks can stand on their own, they really are best used along with the teacher's guide. (All of the Castle Heights books are written to be used by either home educating families or small schools, although they are not reproducible for school groups.)

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