Science in Elementary Education: Methods, Concepts, and Inquiries

by Joseph Peters, David Stout

Substantially rewritten to focus on inquiry teaching and learning as espoused in the National Science Education Standards, the new edition of Science in Elementary Methods, Concepts, and Inquiries will prepare pre-service teachers to plan, facilitate, adapt, and assess inquiry experiences consistent with today’s science classroom. It accomplishes this by implementing the 6E model of inquiry teaching, addressing the planning and needs of inquiry teaching classrooms, and describing the materials teachers need to get up and running. This practical text includes over 350 Teaching Tips throughout and Twelve Inquiry Units that model constructivist applications, build conceptual knowledge, and provide a bank of classroom-tested lessons to use in science classrooms.

Genres: Education

576 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 2010

Reviews

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a stupendous textbook and reference material! The book is separated into two parts: the first part is called "Methods for Teaching Elementary School Science" and includes the chapters inquiring minds in the classroom, discovering science through inquiry, planning for inquiry, inquiry and assessment, inquiry and science as practice, inquiry experiences for all children, inquiry learning opportunities, and professional development in support of inquiry.

The second half of the textbook is all reference. It is titled "Concepts and Inquiries for Teaching Elementary School Science". Any topic in science that would or could be taught in elementary school is addressed in this section, with a lesson for each topic. A great resource.

As the chapter titles indicate, this book focuses on teaching science through inquiry. Students discover and experiment and probe. The teacher does not lecture, but guides the discovery. Each lesson suggestion in the book has ideas for how to do this.