Brainball

Teaching Inquiry Science as a Team Sport

By (author) Mickey Kolis, Todd Lenz, Benjamin H. Kolis

Hardback - £61.00

Publication date:

18 March 2014

Length of book:

196 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781475808872

What is a game? You might think of cards and dice, computers, or sports. You might even think of music or theater as games. But what about Science? Games have rules, players, and objectives, but, maybe most importantly, games are fun. People play games because they think they are “fun,” and sometimes they even learn some important lessons. Classrooms are intended to teach important lessons, and sometimes people think they are fun (not nearly often enough).

Brainball (Science Edition) is designed to combine the best of both worlds! Science Inquiry is the game and learning the intended outcome! Veteran science teachers Kolis and Lenz provide small step-by-step 5E’s lessons and an inquiry-based sequence to guide you through that first learning experience so that you too can play the game of Brainball (Science Edition)!
Combining the best perspectives from two worlds--team sports and science classrooms--Brainball offers a fresh perspective on the learning and teaching of science. The authors contend that not unlike real science, games are the transformation of theory into practice; they require a clear goal, are dynamic, and yet have a clear set of rules. The ultimate aim of the so-called game is science learning, and Brainball is a teaching methodology that embraces the complexity of science education and brings it to life. Sections 2 and 3, along with the numerous appendixes, will appeal to novice teachers, as they offer straightforward guidance, including a chapter on assessment along with series of lesson plans that present a scripted narrative to help instructors immediately bring these ideas to the classroom setting. . . .[T]his one offers easily accessible, down-to-earth strategies for science teachers across the K-12 continuum. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections.