Snowball Starter: Goals of Science Education

By Phoebe Jackson, John Abbott College

At a Glance

Discipline

  • Interdisciplinary

Instructional Level

  • College & CEGEP

Course

  • Teaching Science to Young Learners

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

  • Individual
  • Group
  • Whole Class

Type of Tasks

  • Writing
  • Discussing

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

  • Moodle
  • Visual Classrooms

Class size

  • Small (20-49)

Time

  • Single class period (< 90 mins)

Inclusivity & Accessibility

  • Diversity of engagement

Instructional Purpose

  • Preparation & knowledge activation

Overview

This activity connects students’ prior beliefs about the purpose of elementary science education to the key goals acknowledged by experts in the field. Starting with the snowball strategy, groups use classmates’ written responses to generate a ranked list of their top 5 responses to the question: Why is it important that children learn science? This is followed by a reading and writing task in which students learn 6 literature-supported goals, which they then apply to their ranked list. This helps students take the leap from common superficial and sub-goals to the bigger picture of why we should teach “science-for-all” at the elementary level. Ultimately, this learning allows them, as future teachers, to make informed decisions about how, and to whom, they choose to teach science. Because of the foundational nature of the learning objective, this 80 minute activity is best positioned early in the semester, ideally within the first week.

Instructional Objectives

By the end of this activity, students will be able to explain why it is important that children learn science by drawing on the five “science-for-all” goals (civic, equity, utility, cultural, and transforming-praxis) as well as the economic goal.

Workflow & Materials

Workflow

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow
Document

Sample of Post-class Assignment

Phoebe Jackson

Document

Abbreviated Literature Review

Phoebe Jackson

Document

Sample of Pre-class Assignment

Phoebe Jackson

Contributor's Notes

Benefits
Challenges
Tips
Benefits
  • Scaffolds brainstorming
  • Extends and deepens students’ previously superficial justifications for teaching science
  • Creates foundation on which students’ future pedagogical decisions can be based.
Challenges
  • Without strict time limits on each task, you can easily run out of time. Using a timer for each task can help, as well as giving students time warnings.
  • Students often conflate the civic and utility goals. They also don’t usually fully understand the transforming praxis goal at first. The teacher should keep an eye out for this and point out misconceptions as they arise.
  • Some students will stick to the reasoning that making scientists is the most important outcome and thus choose the economic goal. The teacher can guide them to consider that teaching towards the equity goal can serve to also achieve the economic goal as a secondary outcome, and while further benefitting science/economy by diversifying who is doing science
Tips
  • Try adding a pre-class activity in which students start forming their initial justifications for why it’s important that young children learn science. This way, it will be easier for them to formulate their initial explanation at the start of the snowball activity. I get them to take a picture of something that represents to them why (or not) it is important for young children to learn science. They post it to our forum and explain, then comment on other’s postings.
  • Have the students throw the snowballs at you, the teacher. This lightens the mood and sets the groups at ease with each other.
  • I run this activity with ~30 students, and so I choose groups of 3 as I find that I can manage 10 groups at most. Vary your group size to match how many groups you feel you can facilitate but I don’t recommend exceeding 4 students per group as ranking and justifying require intensive discussion and full participation from all members. As mentioned in the accessibility section, certain students may benefit from working in pairs.

Applied Strategies

Snowball

Peer learning and divergent thinking