TEACHING SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS


environment, but the problems, applications, illustrations, field
trips, and excursions will be very different.
 A workbook and a teacher's manual are available that suggest
related activities. The workbook should be used by the teacher
for suggestions and not as mere busy work for the students. Stu-
dents should be encouraged to experiment and read outside the
laboratory and classroom; to make collections of plants, butter-
flies, insects, rocks; to go on class field trips; visit museums; and
make excursions of their own. These experiences provide inter-
esting material for oral and written discussion.
 Aside from the teaching aids suggested in the foregoing para-
graphs, the teacher should find help from local sources. The
teacher should subscribe to professional magazines and be on the
watch for authentic materials in newspapers and popular maga-
zines. Radio and screen programs frequently provide interesting
and up-to-date science information.
 Visual aids at the correct level of understanding should be
used as freely as they are available. Suggestions for these are
found elsewhere in this bulletin.
 The practices concerning health instruction in Florida vary
 widely. Special health courses are sometimes assigned to the
 science teacher, the home economics teacher, or a special health
 teacher. It is likely that this practice results in a failure to ob-
 tain good health instruction at all, for all too often the health
 course is taught in isolation.
 There are many advantages in the integration of health with
 science, physical education, and home economics, rather than in
 presenting it as an isolated subject. Even if a separate course is
 provided, the teachers of science, physical education, and home
 economics are not relieved of definite responsibility for teaching
 the principles of health in every appropriate lesson of their own
 field.

 SECTION 4. GENERAL SCIENCE AT THE NINTH GRADE LEVEL
 The ninth year of science instruction finds a student in the
 midst of certain psychological changes that are inevitable. Here
 the student must choose between specialized fields of study, he


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