The Skeptical Teacher

Musings of a science teacher & skeptic in an age of woo.

October 2013

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Skeptical Teacher Tweets!
- I was able to get some photos of Comet NEOWISE through my telescope. The comet will be visible for the rest of the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 years ago
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- Announcing INSIGHT at Skeptic.com September 17, 2014
  The Skeptics Society has retired Skepticblog (while preserving all posts online at their original urls for future reference), but we’re proud to announce our bigger, better new blog: INSIGHT at Skeptic.com! Dedicated to the spirit of curiosity and grounded in scientific skepticism’s useful, investigative tradition of public service, INSIGHT continues and exp […]
  Skeptic Webmaster
- A Fond Farewell to Skepticblog September 10, 2014
  Daniel Loxton shares the news that the Skeptics Society is archiving Skepticblog and preparing for the launch of an exciting new blog project.
  Daniel Loxton
- False Equivalence September 6, 2014
  Some people say, "Oh, there's anti-science on both sides of the political aisle." But that neglects one important fact: in only ONE political party are the leadership and the party platform dominated by science denial.
  Donald Prothero
- A creationist mole and a sorry mess September 4, 2014
  A creationist working in the CSUN Biology Department was fired for preaching creationism on the job. But there's more to the case than meets the eye….
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- The great Pacific garbage patch September 1, 2014
  Would you believe there is a patch of trapped garbage floating in the North Pacific bigger than the state of Texas? It's called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch".
  Donald Prothero

Skeptical Lesson Plans from the JREF!

Posted by mattusmaximus on October 13, 2013

Over the last few years, one of the things I’ve done is to work on the Educational Advisory Board of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). One of this board’s functions is to help assemble a variety of lesson plans and modules which emphasize skepticism and critical thinking that can be distributed to teachers everywhere.

I am happy to pass along to you some of the latest lessons from our work at the JREF. Please feel free to share these as you see fit 🙂

New “JREF in The Classroom” Lesson Plans!

The James Randi Educational Foundation is pleased to announce the release of four new additions to our JREF in the Classroom offerings:

Pareidolia: Do You See What You Think You See?
Teacher Edition [PDF] | Student Edition [PDF]

Illusions: Our Visual System
Teacher Edition [PDF]

Cognition: Are You Rational?
Teacher Edition [PDF]

Power Balance: Sports Enhancement, or Placebo?
Teacher Edition [PDF] | Student Edition [PDF]

These are downloadable lesson plans for use in high school and junior high school science and psychology classes that use topics in pseudoscience and the paranormal to teach critical thinking, skepticism, and scientific inquiry. Each lesson is designed to expose students to concepts identified in the National Science Content Standards and AAAS science literacy benchmarks.

These free lesson plans for teachers (and parents) are additions to JREF’s growing catalog of grade-specific standards-focused resources including lesson plans, activity guides, multimedia materials, and more. JREF’s aim with these free resources is to inspire an investigative spirit in the next generation of critical thinkers, providing the intellectual toolkit needed to navigate a life full of difficult decisions, confusing information, and conflicting claims.

Teachers can contact education@randi.org for a free printed classroom kit for any of the eight topics available so far, and to get more information on ways to incorporate JREF’s critical thinking materials into their classrooms.

More information on these and other classroom resources can be found here ≫

And don’t miss JREF President D.J. Grothe’s appearance on the syndicated radio show America Weekend where he discusses JREF’s new free classroom resources. Listen now ≫

This entry was posted on October 13, 2013 at 12:51 am and is filed under education, skeptical community. Tagged: advisory, board, classroom, content, critical thinking, education, educators, James Randi Educational Foundation, JREF, lesson plans, modules, school, skepticism, standards, student, teacher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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