Science Method II, a new model of teaching, which helps UW’s college of Education students gain experience by teaching other lab students in middle and high school settings, enabling the college students to be better teachers in the future.
Associate Professor Andrea Burrows’s “Science Methods II” class will be teaching their own middle and high school classes starting next year.
This method creates a learning center inviting students from lab school and future science teachers interact with the students and gain experience on what works and what doesn’t work in teaching. Burrows said that the method is more powerful and interactive as it helps lab students to learn in a better environment and it also helps future teachers to realize their directions and process of teaching.
“If they [Future Science Teachers] are able to see a student struggle and realize that they didn’t make something clear enough or their directions were confusing, or they needed better visuals or need to use manipulatives, that’s a really powerful interaction as student[s] being there in that space,” Burrow said.
In the beginning, the method was only one sided, the lab students would come, interact with projects and talk briefly about it. The Future Science Teachers were able to create projects that would benefit their students in the future but over the years the upper elementary students gave feedback to the future science students helping them to succeed.
Morgan Kryls, senior in biology education said, “Method II kind of introduces [a] variety of option[s] that we have available to us to teach science and cross the subject.”
The method has created a model of learning from not only one direction, but both directions.
“We try to understand what the student at that particular level was thinking so its not just about the content it is an interaction from learning from the lab school students and lab school students learning from future science teachers,” said Burrow. “It’s not a stand alone activity, it’s a whole class built in the idea of that the students are going to interact with other people and get feedback, part of authentic science is coming up with your own questions and doing a research and communicating with others.”
The residency assigned a total of 11 students this year, from Cheyenne, Laramie and Gillette to all over the state of Wyoming. Starting in January, future student teachers will work with a mentor teacher for a period of 3-6 weeks and will be completely in charge of the classroom.
“Method II is really helping to get some ideas of what will I like to do in my own class in the future,” Kryls said. “It’s definitely giving me some good ideas that finds more fun for kids and let them understand that science isn’t just inside the classroom, but science is kind of everywhere around us.”
Danielle Larson, UW postgrad student, said, “I like how we use theories and we talked about what we put inside of the classroom as a teacher educator and this gives us real practice.”
