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Use this website with Beverley Paine's Getting Started with Home Schooling - Practical Considerations to help you develop your own educational curriculum to suit your family situation, beliefs and lifestyle. The checklists can help you identify your children's current educational skill level in each subject area, as well as find any 'gaps' in their learning, plan what they need to cover or keep track of what has been learned. As you can appreciate this website is continuously under development... It's our aim to add pages on a regular basis in all curriculum areas: check back frequently. We hope you enjoy the articles and activities and find the links and recommended resources useful. Over the next year we will be working our way through each subject area and writing fresh, new content. |
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"Thank you so much for your wonderful website! I was getting quiet frustrated with finding appropriate information on homeschooling - thanks to your website we are now on the right track... Using your checklists for reassurance helped me to have the confidence to come up with my own programme that suits our needs." Rachael "I'm a frequent visitor to your website... I gain valuable knowledge from your website, luckily recommended in the very early stages of our homeschooling journey." Geradine "I checked out your website today and was incredibly impressed by it. I can tell it will be a great resource for our family for many years. THANKS for all the hard work that has gone into making homeschooling easier and much less isolating for families like us." Cynthia |
How NOT To Teach Science
© Teresa Bondora-Revere
Most schools and textbooks approach the teaching and learning of science in a way that creates confusion for the student. At the elementary level it is approached in the right way by teaching each year, most of the sciences, at a basic level. The problem is that the material is "dumbed down". Children are not taught chemistry or introduced to the periodic table of elements. Concepts of motion and physics aren't taught. Correct terminology isn't used, processes that involve a series of steps are glossed over. At the middle school level it gets worse. Instead of continuing to teach all sciences they are parted out and a student then learns only one science a year. They are now taught say, biology, without having had the basics of chemistry. Without chemistry, many processes in biology that are vital to understanding how living things work, cannot be taught. So the material must be dumbed down yet again.
Science is not like math, which is progressive. In math we teach the simple concepts and then progress through simple operations, fractions, etc. We expect that very young children will learn to memorize their multiplication tables but cannot learn simple rules of chemistry or physics. When they have grasped these basic math concepts, we can begin the ideas of algebra. But in science, there is no linear progression. Science is web-like. All parts are interconnected. To answer one question in biology, we must use chemistry. To understand why in chemistry, we can use biology. Physics is dependent on the biology of the body to explain motion in humans.
At the college level, students who major in any science field are counseled to take chemistry first then biology, physics, earth sciences. But at this point it is assumed they have the basics necessary to know where to put the advanced knowledge gained in these classrooms. Sadly, many don't and so they struggle through and are discouraged from the sciences and the many fields and careers to which it may lead.
So how should we teach our children science?
Most of you who home school do not doubt the abilities of your children to master this material. But have you helped to show your child that these concepts are simple to learn? If you have skipped chemistry and physics until they are older you are sending the message that these subjects are hard and cannot be attempted until later. These subjects maintain a mystique and fear that is easily connected to them.
I teach a workshop on teaching science and it's via the internet. This will be for adults only and by donation after the course is finished. I love science and I hope to help us all teach our children how easy and fun science can be. I also hope to dispel the myths that surround the "harder" sciences, thus paving the way for our children to pursue their dreams of being doctors, dentists, veterinarians, wildlife and marine biologists, astronauts, anything they want to be!
Teresa Bondora-Revere is a homeschool mother of two. She lives in Mobile, Alabama, USA where she is working on a book on How To Teach Science. She hosts an on-line workshop on How To Teach Science. You can visit her on-line at www.steelcreek.com
on this website is of a general
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personal or professional advice.
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