A Field Guide to Science and Literacy

Offered by First Hand Learning, Inc. at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis on March 28, 2007.

Presenters:

Mark Baldwin, Director of Education, Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History

Kristen Gasser, Vice President, First Hand Learning, Inc.

Diane Miller, Vice President for Community Science, St. Louis Science Center

E. Wendy Saul, Professor of Education and Inter. Studies, Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis

Framing Questions:

• In what ways can the environment around the school be used as a resource for linking science and language development?
• How does investigation of the natural world lead to engagement in reading, writing, and talking?
• What strategies can teachers use to introduce students to the different literacy genres used to communicate about science?
• How can field guide development contribute to best practices in science education and language development?
• What is the evidence that demonstrates student achievement in science and literacy?

Field guides are an essential tool for the natural scientist and a rich resource for exploring the connections between science and literacy. Held at the world famous Missouri Botanical Garden, this professional development institute will provide participants with specific strategies for using the outdoors and nonfiction science texts to spark student curiosity, increase content knowledge, develop and hone inquiry skills, and practice communicating ideas and facts verbally and graphically.

The PDI will offer practical approaches that participants can put to immediate use with their students and colleagues. Participants will focus on key vehicles for literacy: collecting data in journals, facilitating meaningful science discussions, and designing documents to present data publicly. They will examine and critique an array of published field guides and learn how to use them effectively with students to help them improve their abilities in observation, classification, reading for information, deductive reasoning, and communicating using specific genres of science writing.

Participating teachers, administrators, informal science educators, and professional development leaders will experience firsthand the process of creating a field guide to the Garden’s collections. Examples of authentic student work will be reviewed and practical methods for assessing student achievement identified. Participants will reflect upon their own experiences with integrating science and literacy in the classroom and analyze the numerous possibilities that creating a field guide provides for strengthening students’ skills in these areas. After discussing how they could transfer the strategies they experience at the PDI to their own teaching situations, participants develop their own plans for integrating science and literacy seamlessly. 

Participants should dress comfortably to facilitate short-distance forays to the Garden's outdoor (weather permitting) and indoor collections.

This PDI is presented by First Hand Learning, Inc., a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 to promote inquiry-based teaching, learning from direct experience, and closer links between cultural institutions and schools. First Hand Learning's work in this area has been supported by the cooperation of generous colleagues across the country, and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the John R. Oishei Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.