Teaching Science with Everyday Things

By Victor E. Schmidt and Verne N. Rockcastle

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1881431576
• ISBN13: 9781881431572
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: AIMS Education Foundation
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 9

Customer Reviews

Facinating and fun!

This book is excellent for students of all ages - Verne Rockcastle's creative yet simple activities will delight children and parents alike in learning more about how scientists look at the world. The book has diagrams and explanations of the concepts to guide readers as they try t he activities - and you should try them - they are great! I'd recommend this book to parents, teachers, children, anyone who has an inkling to learn a little more about science in a fun and fascinating way.

Geared at kids, but mindblowing for adults

I've had the pleasure of being a part of two lectures by Dr. Verne Rockcastle in the last year and his approach to learning -- which is all about concept development and conceptual change -- is astounding. He takes the fundamental everyday concepts of nature and develops activities that help build strong and ACCURATE conceptual understanding. Even at an Ivy League institution like Cornell were I am currently an Undergraduate, Dr. Rockcastle's simple and elementary school geared actitives helped my peers and me discover that even we were conceptually ignorant about things we encounter every day. Mirrors, light, electricity, chemistry are all a little different now after learning the real science behind them. This book is full of the activities that I've done in class with Dr. Rockcastle, plus many more, and most of them are very simple and involve nothing but ingredients you can find around your home. Masking tape, a luggage rack, a ball of twine, flashlight cells (one cell is NOT a battery, so Dr. Rockcastle teaches us), and birthday candles. Elementary school science teachers should, if nothing else, pick up this book to find out the kinds of concepts that they may unwittingly be incorrectly teaching today's young people. And they might also be surprised at the kind of complex concepts -- concepts that we adults have trouble understanding -- kids will be able to understand and apply in daily life after these activities. I highly recommend this book to anyone -- even high school science teachers -- because of the simplicity of activities and complexity of the ideas. If I had done some of these activities in high school physics and college chemistry, I would be in a much different place in terms of my science abilities!