Conferences to learn or share about STEM in early childhood

Submit a proposal, attend a conference--two notices about professional development for teachers interested in teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics together as STEM.

 
Proposals are due on January 31 for the PA STEM Vision Conference 
organized by ASSET Inc. based in Pittsburgh, PA.

Attend the 2014 Early Childhood STEM Conference February 6-8, 2014 organized by the Children’s Center at Caltech collaborating with The Children & Families Commission of Orange County and THINK Together.

Submit a conference proposal on science education in early childhood

The deadline to submit a proposal for the 2014 National Association for the Education of Young Children's National Conference and Expo is coming soon....due by January 10th!   Update: the conference committee extended the deadline for proposals to January 17th!
The conference will be in Dallas, Texas this year. The Early Childhood Science Interest Forum will hold the annual meeting at the conference...hope to see you there and hear about your experiences teaching science in preschool and early elementary grades.

Draft Position Statement on Early Childhood Science from NSTA--ready for your feedback

It’s a dream come true to get recognition and support for early childhood science learning from the National Science Teachers Association!

NSTA has developed a position statement endorsing the learning of science among young children, particularly those ages 3 through preschool. Read the draft statement and submit your comments.

Deadline for feedback is Friday, December 20.

You are the expert about your class—will the guidance provided by the NSTA Early Childhood Science Position Statement support your teaching?

Read the Early Childhood Science Education Position Statement and then make a statement about it by submitting a comment to NSTA

Thank you to the National Science Teachers Association leadership and the panel of science teachers and experts in early childhood science education who developed this position statement, and to all of you who comment to make it the best it can be.

Early childhood science at the 2013 NAEYC conference

The NAEYC Early Childhood Science Interest Forum (ECSIF) is a dedicated—and open—group. All members of NAEYC can be members, just sign up on the NAEYC interest forum page. Any one who is not a member of NAEYC can still participate on this blog and on the ECSIF Facebook page. Two of the goals of this interest forum are about getting information out to early childhood teachers: 

 • provide opportunities for the exchange of effective strategies and quality materials for teaching science;
• support efforts to expand professional development opportunities for teachers and administrators;
The annual NAEYC conference is one place where these goals are achieved, and this year was no exception!

There were many excellent sessions on science and engineering teaching in early childhood with opportunities to learn science and engineering content and see model lessons, view videos of children involved in explorations and inquiry and their teachers supporting them, share resources, discuss what science and engineering learning should look like in PreK-grade 2, share pictures of classroom and outdoor settings that support science learning, hear how programs develop an interdisciplinary approach, and learn what researchers are finding out about standards and assessment in early childhood. And more! 

A session on play provided a chunk of time
to explore the properties of materials,
and our own thinking.

A community of practice paired the Project Approach with the CLASS with great success.

Some of the ECSIF core group met to plan the annual meeting.

The ECSIF annual meeting--where rigorous discussion is welcomed and all can share ideas.

Sharing resources at the ECSIF 2013 annual meeting.

Experiencing an engineering challenge helps
teachers prepare developmentally appropriate
engineering activities for their students.

Engineering learning can be paired
with a favorite story.

“Defining science learning and teaching” session, led by Ingrid Chalufour,
Cindy Hoisington, Karen Worth, and Linda Froschauer, laid the groundwork for
what is appropriate and effective science teaching in early childhood.

Adults need to experience inquiry
so we can help children.

Look what I see! Adults experiencing the wonder of
observing an interesting phenomena.

Hope you didn't miss this session: Sharing the BIG IDEAS of physical science
with pre-K children: Properties of matter, force/motion, and measurement.

These early childhood educators got right into it--there's so much to share and learn!

 The NAEYC conference was truly worthwhile experience--I wish that all programs could afford to send their teachers, and that all family home childcare providers could afford to attend. I wrote a little more about the conference on the NSTA Early Years blog.

Another ECSIF goal is to:

• establish and maintain a collaborative relationship with other professional organizations with similar goals, such as the National Science Teachers Association, the Council for Elementary Science Education, and the Association of Constructivist Teaching.

At this year's conference, Linda Froschauer, editor of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) elementary journal, Science and Children, announced that early childhood science educators with NSTA have drafted an Early Childhood Science Position Statement, and it will be available on the NSTA website for review within the next couple of weeks. This will help early childhood teachers know what is best practice in science teaching before Kindergarten.

Annual meeting of the ECSIF and many sessions on science and engineering at the 2013 NAEYC conference

Interested in early childhood science education? Take a look at the sessions offered at the annual NAEYC conference this week in Washington, DC.

The NAEYC Early Childhood Science Interest Forum (ECSIF) will have our annual meeting, open to all, at the NAEYC conference. So if you are coming to the conference, join us for a lively discussion of the video clips we’ll be viewing of toddlers and preschoolers engaged in science activities. Come find out how you can participate in this Interest Forum and learn about efforts to develop a position statement on early childhood science education. Thursday 11/21/2013 at 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM in Room 146B Washington Convention Center. 

The Saturday 8am conference session, “Defining science learning and teaching”, led by Ingrid Chalufour, Cindy Hoisington, Karen Worth, and Linda Froschauer, is top of my list because I want to know what these educators and researchers will tell us about what young children are capable of learning and effective strategies for engaging young children in scientific inquiry and conceptual learning. 

If you can't make it to the meeting, stop by the ECSIF table at the Interest Forum Cafe and sign up to participate in the ECSIF and get email updates. Science and engineering learning begins with young children and we can support their explorations.

A review of More than Magnets : Exploring the Wonders of Science in Preschool and Kindergarten

More than Magnets : Exploring the Wonders of Science in Preschool and Kindergarten by Sally Moomaw and Brenda Hieronymus, published by Redleaf Press in 1997.

 

A review by the NAEYC Early Childhood Science Interest Forum.

Explore simple machines with your children, enhance the learning opportunities at your science table, improve your conversations with science focused open-ended questions. More than Magnets, is an excellent resource for classroom teachers of children 3 to 5. With 117 activities ranging from physical to life, and chemical sciences, there is a rich array of opportunities to enhance science learning throughout the pre-K classroom and curriculum. The introduction lays out the authors’ approach, “Whole Science”, offering a Piagetian view of child development and explaining what young children are able to understand scientifically. Throughout the book the authors work to build the readers understanding of the science concepts being explored and what young children might learn about them.

Activities are organized in Chapters that include Science Displays, Machines and Pendulums, Science at the Sensory Table, Art, Music, Cooking, and Gross Motor. Some activities stand alone, such as “A Spring Tradition: Varieties of Seeds.” In the Science Displays chapter, this activity provides an overview of what children might learn about seeds and the plants that grow from them. It lists the materials needed and the sequence for implementation. It also describes what to look for in the children’s response, a few questions to extend thinking, and Modifications that incorporate literacy and documentation. Finally it suggests “Integrated Curriculum Activities”. Some of these suggestions extend the learning into other areas of the curriculum while others extend science learning.

In contrast, some of the activities are sequenced to deepen children’s science understanding over time. An example is in the Machines and Pendulums chapter. Six activities take children from an introduction of balls and ramps to an exploration of the effect of ramp texture on the speed of vehicles. Each activity follows the same format and includes detailed descriptions of the materials needed and a “Sequence for Implementation.” There is much guidance to help teachers enhance science learning. Starting with information about the science itself and what children might learn about it. There are also typical child responses gathered from a field test of the activities. One of the strengths of these instructions is the excellent questions for the teachers to use when promoting children’s scientific thinking. “Modifications” and “Integrated Curriculum Activities” suggest additional ways to enrich the science learning. Finally, “Helpful Hints” address ways to make the activity safe for the children as well as ways to adjust for different developmental levels.

We would recommend that users of this guide allow children some time to explore the materials in a more open-ended way at times, allowing them to experiment and trying out their own ideas. For example, the ramps sequence is carefully constructed to focus children on particular concepts such as momentum or friction. While there is value to this structure, children would also benefit from time to more openly explore in order to become familiar with the materials. The interests and ideas revealed in their exploration might suggest a different sequence for the activities. In this case the inquiry would be driven by the children and thus enrich their ability to consider the hows and whys of their experience, see patterns, and make meaning. 

Written before the New Generation Science Standards (NGSS), direct connections are not made to the learning continuum, however the experiences cover a wide range of content in the physical, life, and chemical sciences. The science concepts introduced easily connect to later learning as presented in NGSS. Most importantly, the authors present an inquiry-based approach to learning involving three key elements of the inquiry process - hands-on explorations, documentation, and discussion. 

Early Childhood Science and Engineering Resource Reviews

What is best practice in early childhood science teaching? What should young children be learning about science? How can we best support teachers as they work to build a science rich curriculum in their classrooms? Our interest forum was created to provide an ongoing discussion of these important questions. Over the years many books and resources in other formats have been published that attempt to provide answers to these questions. Some are more successful than others. We are going to use this space to post reviews of resources and hopefully at the same time communicate a set of ideas about inquiry-based science teaching and appropriate content for young children. Please share your thoughts about these reviews, experiences you have had using these resources, and any suggestions for books you would like us to review in the future. 

The reviews will be posted as new posts.