Scientific Method

Scientific Method
This is one of my science songs from the CD Island of Life. It is available on iTunes and many other download sites. It is also available on CD Baby. Below are the lyrics and a brief lesson to accompany the song.

The scientific method is hard they sigh
But all it is, is asking why
Look at the world and what do you see?
Millions of questions floating so free

What do you see?
What is a fact?
The scientific method will tell you that

Ask a question then make a guess
Set out to prove it was there success?
Making discoveries finding things out
Asking what this world is all about

Listen real well 
What do you hear?
The scientific method will make things clear

What will you find?
It may be unknown
The scientific method will you know

Scientists are curious so they make a plan
They set objectives to understand
Scientists are logical to keep things straight
They're open minded people who investigate

Science is real
It's all around
Observing and thinking will make you proud

What will you find?
It may be unknown
The scientific method will let you know

Scientific Method Lesson

Scientists are very curious people. They want to know how things work. By understanding how things work they can solve many problems. Just think of a car mechanic. Car mechanics understand the engine of a car. By understanding how the engine works they can fix your car when it does not run right. Mechanics are the scientists of car engines. Doctors are the scientists of the human body. Can you think of any other kinds of scientists? Characteristics of a Scientist:  Scientists are curious Scientists have objectives Scientists investigate   Scientists think logically     Scientists are open-minded  The Scientific Method:    Identify the problem to be solved   Gather evidence Make a hypothesis Test the hypothesis Share your results Here is an example of how the scientific method works:  ·        You wake up one morning and you have a sore throat. You do not feel sick so you do not know what is causing your throat to hurt. Identify the problem – Your throat hurts and you do not know why.  ·        That afternoon you go to the doctor. You tell her all of the food and drink that you have put down your throat. You tell her what time you went to bed. You try and think of anyone with whom you have had close contact. The doctor looks down your throat and takes your temperature. You have just Gathered evidence.  ·        The doctor makes a hypothesis that you have strep throat.  ·        The doctor takes a throat culture from your throat to test her hypothesis in an experiment.  ·        In her experiment she gently rubs  a Petri dish with your throat culture. She marks this dish “Experimental”. This experimental dish is also known as the variable. She has another Petri dish with a sample of the organism known to cause strep throat. This sample is called the control.  ·        The doctor says that she will call you in 24 hours with the results. When she calls you she reports that you do not have strep throat. Another kind of bacterium has caused your throat to be sore. Thus, she has rejected her original hypothesis. Now she takes all the information that she gathered from you and records it into her note book. She has noticed other patients with similar sore throats and wants to investigate how people are contracting this bacterium. She will do more research, make a new hypothesis, and conduct more experiments.

Suit Sheds Light on School Makeup Courses Pt 2

"Makeup courses." It is in the the title folks. "Alternative" schools like ACE and others like the one where I work allow students a chance to make up the work that they would have missed if they were suspended. These schools are also sometimes known as credit recovery schools for students who have failed to earn the amount of credits to keep them on par for graduation.


My experience is that some students appreciate these schools and take advantage of what they offer and others play around and complain that "it is too much work." Either way it allows a student to maintain involvement in school and as I mentioned in the last post. However, a statement in the article was that P.E. merely consisted of filling out worksheets. We do the same thing in my school. It involves the honesty of the student and the parent or guardian. The student writes down what they did to engage in exercise. Obviously, the student and parent/guardian can fake this information. However, this is one of the problems within education; the grade, diploma, and degree are taken as synonymous with education. I try to tell tell students all of the time that intelligence is gained through knowledge and not grades.

Another statement from the article was "limited direct access to knowledgeable teachers." I know my subject which is social studies, but chemistry and algebra II are subjects that I am not capable of teaching. I believe that alternative schools should have teachers who are knowledgeable in their fields. I can understand that sometimes these schools expect their teachers to help with all subjects. This would not stand in a regular school setting nor should it at an alternative school.

The article goes on to state that students take tests over and over again without the questions changing. This can be controlled by the teacher I know I do in my classroom. Moreover, the lawsuit claimed that the program had deficits but in my experience it is usually the student who has the deficit. That is one of the main reasons that students can have some success in these programs. The students that I have encountered lack many of the skills one would assume that they should know at their particular grade level. If these classes were more difficult and asked for more in depth analyses these students would never get out of high school.

This leads us into the hot topic of the state of education. Everybody seems to have an opinion about what's wrong with education. I will weigh in on this topic in my next post.

Suit Sheds Light on School Makeup Courses Pt 1

This post is in reply to the St. Louis Post Dispatch's front page story a couple of weeks back about alternative schools particularly in the St. Louis Public Schools. First, the headline implies that these schools operate under the cover of darkness. Although I do not understand why ACE did not let a reporter observe their school, these are not secretive places. I work at such a school located in the affluent inner ring of suburbs of St. Louis. One may witness some off task behaviors but this is not unusual although it may seem more obvious because these schools are much smaller making observation of student behavior much easier.

The time limit of three hours is not suspect given the fact that most of the students are putting all of their focus in one or two classes via the computer. If you take away all of the teacher directions, lecture, discussions, lunch, P.E. and other activities at the regular high school then three hours is not too far off from actual focused learning time. Now, it is true that computer based schools do lack the enrichment activities of the regular school but my experience with students at our school is that they prefer it that way. After all, if a student is interested in these enrichment activities then they would not engage in behavior that leads them to be recommended for an alternative school.

The range of behavior that can lead to a placement in a computer based school is lack of motivation, fighting, truancy, possession of drugs, emotional issues, etc... However, lack of motivation is the root of all the various behaviors that lead a student into one of these schools. In my experience students who are suspended for fighting are focusing on their social lives more than they are focusing on their education. Therefore, the motivation to go to school is more for socializing than it is for education.

If the students from Soldan wanted their chemistry lab then that is where they should have been. The article is mute on what classes these two students were in, their grade point average, and their record of conduct. Their claim was that their rights were violated. HOGWASH! What about the rights of students who would like to go to a school to learn, free from disinterested students who would rather fight than learn the non violent history of Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

Behavior has consequences. You reap what you sow. The parents of these individuals need to let them work through the consequences of their behavior and LEARN something from it. Take advantage of the curriculum that is offered at ACE and LEARN. Malcolm X learned with a dictionary in a prison. Computer based courseware comes in many stripes and some of it can be quite good. We need these schools to catch the students who for one reason or another struggle in the regular school.

The future lawyers and their mentors from The Washington University Civil Justice Clinic have likely been successful students who didn't have a need for the stripped down learning of places like ACE. The students from Soldan could have been suspended out of school left to fall behind on credit. I would have liked to see the ST. Louis Public Schools fight them over this case but they have too many issues to let something like this divert their attention and resources.