Important Words from Glossary- February 5, 2011

Concept : 1. A general notion or idea; conception. 2. an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct. 3. a directly conceived or intuited object of thought.

Constructivism

:

A family of theories about knowledge and learning whose basic tenet is that all knowledge is constructed by synthesizing new ideas with what we have previously come to know. This means that knowledge is not passively received. Rather, knowledge is actively built up by the learner as he or she experiences the world.

Hypothesis : An inference or a guess that is tested through a planned investigation or experiment.

Inquiry

:

The type of exploration that lies at the heart of scientific activity. According to the National Science Education Standards, inquiry is "a multifaceted activity that involves making observations; posing questions; … planning investigations; … using tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data; proposing answers, explanations, and predictions; and communicating the results" (National Research Council, 1996, p. 23).

Mediator

:

A teaching role in which the teacher helps students to learn by reflecting their own ideas back to them and guiding them in sorting out the inconsistencies. As a mediator, the teacher helps students delve deeply into their thoughts and expand their own thinking about an idea.

Metacognition

:

Self-monitoring, with the capacity to "know what you know" and what you do not yet understand.

Process skills

:

Abilities that help people gain information about nature and natural phenomena; these include skills such as observing, inferring, classifying, recording data, predicting, and planning investigations. Process skills are employed on a planned and regular basis by those engaged in scientific activity. Also called inquiry skills.

Scientific Question

:

What makes a question a scientific question? A question is considered scientific when, in order to find the answer, people usually engage in actions that include:
■ Making careful observations.
■ Coming up with an idea or ideas that may explain these observations.
This idea is referred to as a hypothesis.
■ Setting up an experiment to test the idea.
■ Exploring the results and trying to make sense of them.
■ Asking others to repeat the experiments

Theory

:

A comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a considerable body of evidence-in other words, the best explanation we currently have for why something is so.



These words are important for teachers to know in order to teach science. These words are very important to the subject of science. It is important for  the teacher  to know and use scientific questions to help students learn about science.Scientific questions are good to use when doing a scientific experiment. It is important for student to know about process skills and to make a hypothesis before starting an experiment. It is a good for a teacher to be a mediator especially while doing experiments. It important for teachers to make lessons for inquiry learning as well as direct learning. It is important to do direct instruction lessons first and then do inquiry lessons second so that students have prior knowledge. It is important for teachers to know the concepts that the students need to learn and to teach these concepts. It is important for teachers to know what constructivism is . It is also important to know what theory is and to teach scientific theory to the students. Metacognition is important for teachers to look for and to help students improve on their mistakes. I chose these words because they (the words) are important to knowing for science and for teachers to know in general. Teachers need to know these words in order to teach science and to help students understand science. These concepts need to be known in order to do scientific experiments and to understand all of science. The process skills, scientific question, hypothesis, and concept are all important for students to know in order to do experiments.