Hardly Rocket Science
Collaboration with math and science teachers doesn't need to be complicated
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2004
Why don't librarians click with science and math teachers? "Librarians are English and social science majors" who often aren't very comfortable with math and the sciences, says David Barr, a director of the 21st Century Information Fluency project (abbreviated as 21cif) of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) in Aurora, IL. Further, science and math teachers don't often seek librarians' assistance, especially when it comes to using databases and other library technology.
But when math and science teachers and librarians do work together, good things happen. In the Information Fluency project, which brings Illinois teachers and media specialists together for professional development workshops statewide, participating math and science teachers and their librarian peers have created engaging and dynamic lesson plans. For example, science teacher Belinda Veillon and media specialist Jane Larson from Nippersink Middle School in Richmond, IL, co-designed a unit to teach gifted sixth graders how to find sites with credible information on nanotechnology. This project, along with other librarian/teacher collaborations in forensic science, plate tectonics, and other subjects, appears on the 21cif Web site at wizard.imsa.edu.
To create these kinds of projects, Barr encourages librarians and teachers to find common ground, which he says is "at the junction between the science standards and information literacy standards." There's a lot of wild speculation on science topics in the general media—from how the Atkins diet works to how serious a threat global warming is—and students need to know where and how to find the facts.
One way for librarians to help students with math and science is to spotlight the wealth of related resources available online. For instance, "students don't realize sometimes that there's a difference between the [level of material in the] Encyclopedia Americana and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology," says Marti Guarin, a reference librarian at IMSA. The librarian needs to spend time with these products to direct students to the appropriate resource, she says.
Some of the best of these online math and science resources are subscription products, such as netTrekker from Thinkronize (www.nettrekker.com), an annotated database of Web resources on curriculum topics, including science and math, that supplies state and national curriculum standards that relate to each site. Another is Grolier's online version of the New Book of Popular Science (for information, visit go.grolier.com), a science encyclopedia for middle and high school students available only as part of the Grolier Online reference set, which includes a topical "Science in the News" section.
Paula Garrett, IMSA's library coordinator, says that while math classes do fewer library-based research projects, students always study the history of math, problems dealing with the number of miles from one city to another, or math as it relates to the news. To promote library resources to math teachers, she also recommends serving on committees with math teachers, appearing at math teacher's meetings, demonstrating any new Web sites of interest, and showing off new print and online reference tools. Although "the whole idea of science intimidates some people," it's not hard to keep up better communication with math and science teachers, says Garrett.
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