A new teaching aid to assist undergraduate dental students to learn charting methods was developed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the aid. Baseline charting tests were completed by 58 inexperienced clinical students at the start of a weekly half-day attachment at 3 community dental service (CDS) teaching clinics. These students were randomly assigned, in their tutor groups, to act as either test or control groups. The test group was actively taught charting with the new aid over their first 5-week attachment and control students were taught in the traditional way. Final charting tests were completed at the end of the attachments by all students and their results compared with baseline test results. The test group improved their mean scores from 20 out of a possible 50 marks at baseline to 36 at final test, a mean increase of 15 marks and an improvement of 71%. The control group scored a mean of 18 marks at baseline and improved this to 25, an increase of 7 marks, an improvement of 39%. It is concluded that the new teaching aid is more effective in assisting the students to learn charting than the traditional method.
Unfortunately, most lower elementary grades teach little to no science content due to a primary focus on language arts and math instruction. Therefore, this article focuses on the importance of integrating science with language arts and shares steps on creating stations within an effective integrated science and language arts learning center. The example given was developed to aid in elementary students' understanding of aquatic animals, specifically using seashells to explore the world of mollusks. Stations within the center are described in detail and supporting documents from student outcomes are included. In addition, an explanation of where the center is used in the 5E Instructional Model learning sequence is discussed. This outline of a completed center provides classroom teachers or non-traditional educators insight into the cognitive process for making one and can be applied to any topic for integration of science and language arts.
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