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Preparing Tomorrow's Science and Math Teachers Summer
2003 |
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College of DuPage's team - Julie Sutherland, Brenda Alberico, Tom Carter, Jacqueline Dlatt, Adenuga Atewologun, and Anthony Lorsbach of Illinois State University - successfully modified and offered a pilot section of a biology course for elementary education majors. One of the modifications was the addition of a service-learning component. Students were required to complete ten hours of volunteering to teach or assist in educational settings such as schools, Girl Scout meetings, and local science centers. In post-course evaluations, student responses to the service-learning component were positive and enthusiastic. One student reported, "By teaching the subject to the kids, I became even more familiar with it. My confidence level in becoming a teacher grew even higher." Another modification was giving students the option of preparing a presentation and meeting individually with the instructor in place of taking an exam. The presentations required students to demonstrate content knowledge by constructing and explaining a concept map about a particular topic, and finding lesson plans that could be used to teach the same topic at the elementary level. One student reported that, "Doing the presentations helped me more than anything. Finding all the material that is available to teachers helped me a lot. The presentation option should be mandatory." Overall, students who chose the presentation option felt it more closely modeled what they will have to do as classroom teachers. When asked which activities or methods in the course were most helpful in terms of learning the content, one student replied, "The group activities. I definitely believe that two heads are better than one. You grasp the concept more." In future quarters, additional group activities will be incorporated, as well as new exploratory labs. The College of DuPage is now considering a special section of physical science for elementary education majors to complement the biology and mathematics courses currently being offered. Julie Sutherland: Suther@cdnet.cod.edu
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