A Long Semester. A Lot Of Stress. A Happy Ending!

Science and Technology Methods has been one of my favorite classes so far. This class has provided me with many great opportunities. I got to participate in and judge a Science Fair. I got to create a book trailer, teach a 5th grade class and work with great co-teacher candidates who have taught me so much more than a classroom or textbook ever could. I also learned a lot from my very knowledgeable professor Dr. Smirnova.

Some other great things I took away from this class are presentation tips, confidence in my teaching and great technology platforms that I can use in my future classrooms. I know the experiences and lessons I took away from this class will be things I look back on and use in my years to come.

My favorite part of this class was the teamwork and support that every co-teacher candidate in the classroom provided. We all provided our own take on topics and contributed our own background and personal knowledge. Our reflective practices were also very beneficial. We were to comment on each others presentations leaving constructive criticism yet highlighting what we think was done well. These tips really helped me develop my own style of teaching and learn from my mistakes. I enjoyed commenting on my peers blogs and reading them to see how our opinions on different topics were similar and different. Some of my peers blogs that I commented on were:
Melissa's Blog
Erin's Blog
Amanda's Blog
Alyssa's Blog
Daniela's Blog

In the beginning of the class I was not comfortable with teaching any part of science. Though it is my favorite subject, I had no prior experience in teaching it. Working with Dr. Smirnova, my co-teacher candidates and the different forms of technology, I am not very confident in my ability to teach science to elementary students as well as incorporate a variety technological resources that are educational yet engaging. I feel that during this course I was really able to grow as not only a future educator, but as a professional team member as well. I was given the chance to form may different professional relationships and I feel I took advantage of that by working with and getting to know my different classmates.

I will certainly miss this class but I will forever be thankful for the lessons that it has taught me. Dr. Smirnova was kind enough to make us all Certificates of Survival to always remind us of our growth over the last 16 weeks. This certificate is well worth working for.

Technology Is Fun!

In most of my blogs I have referred to the class I am taking as Science Methods. That is just the shortened name of the class. The entire name of the class is Science and Technology Methods for Childhood Education. The focus of our class was on learning how to teach science through inquiry, but we also explored different types of technology platforms.

Technology is becoming a necessity in learning especially for younger students. Children as young as two are now being exposed to different video game systems and tablets. Their parents give them the tablets and phones to play games to keep them quiet in cars, in restaurants, on rainy days inside and all other instances. In a sense it takes the stress off of the parent to entertain the child. These children learn everything from there ABC's and 123's to how to read, science practices and of course how to use technology and the different platforms that come along with the tablets and video game systems. 

In my class this semester my teacher encouraged us to explore different types of technology. To my surprise a lot of them were surprisingly easy to use and create great content. Below are some of the different technologies we used in class and brief descriptions of them. 

Adobe Connect was an app that we had to use during the beginning of the semester because of inclement weather. The app allowed our teacher to speak to us in real time, show us course material and allow us to respond to her questions. We were able to respond via microphone on our computers or by typing our responses into an area where out entire class could respond. This app was great because it allowed my entire class to participate in class from the comfort of our own homes. I would certainly use this app in my future classrooms to help students with work if they have questions or concerns and they are home. I would be able to bring up work on the screen for the student and I can see. I can show the student where they went wrong in their work as well as things that they did well on. I could also use this to contact other professionals in my school when I have questions and need their assistance. 

About a quarter of the way through the semester I attended a Smart Board Training. During this training the attendees learned basic smart board functions as well as how to incorporate them into our lessons. Smart board lessons are great for children to interact because after all, a smart board is an interactive white board. We learned how to group things together, create charts with tools to hide the answers, and we also learned how to use tools such as magic ink and disappearing ink. I think smart boards are a fantastic invention in the classroom. With new technology more than one student can now work at a smart board at once. There is also technology called Smart Exchange. It allows a user to make smart board lessons and then access them from any type of interactive white board they come into contact with. At the end of the training we all received certificates of completion. With the knowledge I gained I am very excited to use a smart board in my future classroom. 

During the semester my teacher encouraged us to try new platforms of technology. One of my classmates introduced me to Lino. Lino is an online way to make a collage. You log on to the site and you choose a background. Next you choose photos to add to the background and then you can add virtual sticky notes as well. These sticky notes can contain any sort of information regarding the photo that was added. You can even attach links to the sticky notes. In my class we had to make a space collage full of articles. I chose to use Lino because it is user friendly and is very creative and engaging. I like this platform because it allows more than one student to work on a project at a time but students need to refresh the page to see the work of the other students. I plan to use this in my future classroom for group assignments for article collages such the one I had to do. 

N is for Newsela. Newsela is an educational website that allows teacher and students access to awesome articles about any topic that one would be interested in learning about and the content is updated quite frequently. Newsela can be used from a teachers point of view to assign articles for students to read online and answer questions about them. Newsela also measures the Lexile level that the article is read at. Newsela will also track the progress of Lexile levels of students in a graph form on each of their pages. For students, Newsela is great because it allows them to keep up on current events in all parts of the world about topics that interest everyone. Students could use Newsela to do current events presentations in any subject. They could also use Newsela to do independent reading and to educate themselves on a topic that might interest them. 

Animoto was a fun application to use. It allows the user to make short or long videos that combine text, images as well as video segments and music to make a video. In my Science and Technology Methods class we were assigned to use a trade book an make a book trailer on the book. I chose the book The Little Raindrop by Joanna Gray. I used photos from the book and text to tease the audience to intrigue them to read the book. Animoto can be used to all different types of purposes though. It can be used to make videos of students working, it could be used as a message to send to students if you are absent one day. Students can also use Animoto for various projects in the classroom. It can be used as a creative form of Summative assessment instead of a test. I definitely plan to use Animoto in my future classroom for summative assessment purposes. 

A huge part of our class is using Google and the various services that it provides. During this class we were encouraged to use the various services that google provides to benefit our learning as well as the learning of those around us. Any time we had a writing assignment or writing lesson plans, we chose to do so on google docs because it is very versatile. More than one person is able to work on the document at a time. It also saves the current work automatically and backs it up without having to manually do so. That is one huge benefit of google docs. When it came to creating lesson plans this semester with my co-teacher candidates, this tool was very handy. All of my co-teacher candidates and I were able to work on our designated parts of the lesson plan at once. We were also able to see all of the changes that everyone made. This allowed us to see the progress that the document was making. 

Another great tool that google supplies is google slides. This is the google equivalent to Microsoft PowerPoint. I personally believe that google slides is a lot more user friendly and essentially more efficient. Like google docs, google slides allows more than one user to work on the slide show at once. It is easy to attach links and add photos and videos to the slide show. My co-teacher candidates and I used google slides to create slide shows that corresponded with our lesson plans that we implemented the the 5th grade class. We were all able to work on the document at once and we were able to see the changes that each member made. We also found it very simple to add slide effects and transitions to the different slides and photos. This helped to keep the students engaged as well as make the overall presentation look more presentable. 

One of my favorite google platforms is called Blogger. In my Science and Technology class my teacher asked us to reflect on our practices and share our ideas. Blogging is a great way to reflect on what we learn and to elaborate our ideas. Instead of countless reflective essays and tests, reflective blogging is just another way to summarize the information and analyze how well students retained it. It is also a way for students to put heir own creative spin on the information they have learned. Blogging makes the content more personal because it has less strict perimeters. It allows students to connect to the information and share it with the rest of their class and the rest of the blogging world. I think blogs are a great thing for students to have access to. They can be personalized, engaging and creative. Students seem to be drawn to assignments that they can personalize. Overall it makes the experience more memorable and worthwhile for the student. 

In our class we used other types of technology such as screencast-o-matic, glogster, voice thread and WebQuest. We also learned how to incorporate them into teaching science as well as other subjects. Having experience and knowledge of these various technology platforms makes me much more comfortable teaching students of the future. 

Science Can Be Physical!

Science is everywhere! Most people don't realize that science goes way beyond living and non-living things. In Part 4 of my textbook for Science Methods, the topics were about physical science. Physical science is the study of topics such as motion, matter, energy and machines. These topics help us understand and create the everyday life that we know. The chapter starts off naming a few jobs that someone could obtain in the field of Physical Science. A few of these jobs are:

• Chemist
• Physicist
• Engineer

The textbook then explains some of the technologies that people in these fields of study use on a daily basis to help our work become a better place. Some of these technologies are incredibly simple while others are more complex and require special knowledge in a persons field to use. Some of these technologies are: 

• Radiation-measuring devices
• Computers
• Circuit Testers
• Particle Accelerators
• Spectrophotometers
• Wind Tunnels
• Lasers
• Solar Energy Collectors
• Oscilloscopes

Like the part of the book on Life Sciences, this part of the book was broken into two chapters. The first chapter was on Matter and Motion. The second chapter was on Energies and Machines.The chapter on Matter and Motion started with the topic of Matter. It first talked about the 10 most common elements. They are:

• Oxygen
• Silicon
• Aluminum
• Iron
• Calcium
• Sodium
• Potassium
• Magnesium
• Hydrogen
• Carbon

The segment of the chapter also talked about:

• Physical properties of matter
• Kinetic molecular theory
• Chemical changes in matter
• Elements, Compounds and Mixtures
• Parts of an atom
• Fundamental parts of matter
• Nuclear energy. 

The next part of the chapter talked about motion. It contained topics such as:

• Newtons Laws of Motion
• Gravity and Motion
• Jet and Rocket Engines
• Flight

The next chapter talked about energies and machines. There are many different kinds of energy. They all are made differently and are used to different things. 

• Electrical Energy: Consists of static and current electricity. 
• Sound Energy: How its caused and is it absorbed or reflected
• Light Energy: Reflection, Refraction, Light, Prisms and Color
• Heat Energy: What is it? How is it measured? How do the changed occur?

Other concepts around energy are the conservation of energy, energy transfer and the concepts of simple machines and friction. 

Some major questions that can be posed to students with these topics are:

• What are the properties of matter?
• How can properties of matter be measured?
• What makes water change from solid to liquid to gas?
• How do sounds change?
• How can light be directed?
• What is the path of electricity through a circuit?
• What are the properties of magnets?
• What happens to the energy from the sun?
• How can energy be absorbed?
• What are the safest, cleanest, and cheapest ways to generate energy? 

Like the previous chapters, this chapter contained lesson plans and potential unit plans for students of all ages and learning levels. Like the lessons of the previous chapters, I most definitely plan to use in my future career as a teacher. 

Science Can Be About Me!

One of my favorite things to learn about in school was always The Human Body. For some reason the different bodily systems always intrigued me. The way they all interact and have the ability to repair themselves and adapt to something that could happen to the body. Along with the Human Body I always enjoyed learning about other life sciences such as plant and animals as well. In the third part of my text book for my Science Methods course we read about the life sciences. I decided to write a short summary on it.

The chapter always starts by providing possible careers someone could have in that field. In the Life Science field some careers a person could have are:

• Physician
• Medical Technologist
• Marine Biologist
• Biologist
• Zoologist 

The chapter also always provides different technologies that are used in the field. Some technologies in the field of Life Science are:

• Binoculars
• Optical Microscope
• Autoclave
• Heart/Lung Machine
• Blood Pressure Monitoring Device
• Prosthetic Devices
• Cardiac Pacemaker
• CAT Scan Devices
• MRI Devices
• Technologies to convert biomass into biofuels

Next, there is one chapter on Living Things and one chapter on The Human Body. The Living Things chapter was broken down into a few parts. It is broken down into Classifying Living Things. The chapter informs readers about the difference between living and non living things, vertebrates and invertebrates, and the difference between sexual and asexual reproduction. The book goes on to explain the difference between the Plant Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom. The book then explains the break down of each. The book goes through the different classes. 

• Kingdom
• Phylum
• Class 
• Order
• Family
• Genus
• Species

The next chapter in part three of the book was about The Human Body. The different bodily systems were broken down into the name and what they are in charge of. 

• Digestive System: Structure and function as well as food and nutrition
• Skeletal-Muscular System: Structure and function of bones and the structure and function of of muscles. 
• Respiratory System: Structure and function of the diaphragm, windpipe, and lungs as well as oxygen transport.
• Nervous System: Structure and function of the nerves. Also, controls the senses of the body such as skin sensors, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. 
• Excretory System: Structure and function of the kidneys, skin and liver. 
• Circulatory System: Structure and function of the heart and blood vessels. Also controls bodily functions revolving around blood. 
• Reproductive System: Structure and function of the reproductive systems in the male and female body. Also controls heredity. 

The chapters also provides different unit plan ideas that could be done. They provide essential questions that students should answer in the unit plans. Listed below are some of the questions I felt would really benefit student learning. 

• What conditions are needed to keep a plant alive and healthy?
• What conditions are needed to keep an animal alive and healthy?
• What are the changes a plant undergoes from sed to death?
• How are the life cycles of animals and plants similar and different?
• What makes a cell so special to life?
• What is a body system?
• How do my genes and my environment influence who I am?
• What organisms can convert the sun's energy into food?
• How does my life affect earth?
• What can I contribute to create and maintain a healthy earth. 

These chapters are very beneficial as the also provide sample lesson plans for students of all ages and learning levels. This book is very helpful and something I would use for my future use as a teacher. 

Extra! Extra! Science Here!

One way to learn or to teach science is through news articles. A lot of people tend to ignore science in the news, but the articles that come out are rather interesting. For our class project we had to make a collage of articles on a topic of our choice. I chose to do my collage on space articles. The platform I chose was called Lino. On Lino, you add photos and add virtual sticky notes to the photos. These virtual sticky notes can have any kind of writing on them that you wish. 

Some of the articles I chose were:

•  Scientists May Be A Bit Closer To Knowing If Mars Has Ever Had Life 
• Was There Once Life On Mars? Spacecraft Will Look Into The Mystery
• Scientists Say They Discovered A New Planet In Our Solar System
• Now We Know Mars Has Liquid Water, Could Martians Be Next?

I chose these articles because the idea that there is life beyond our universe has always interested me. I would love to be able to know what the future of our world is going to look like. I have also always wondered if people could live on Mars. If a person were to think about it, our planet Earth is just one small planet in our galaxy. There are millions and millions of galaxies beyond ours. There has to be another small planet like ours, with people like us who are searching for the same thing that the scientists in N.A.S.A are searching for. 

These articles have pertained to our classroom discourse because we discussed ecosystems and biomes. These ecosystems and biomes are what keep our planet going. Without these ecosystems, food chains, and biomes our planet would just be another lifeless planet like the rest of the planets in our sun's orbit. In class we also spent time talking about space and the articles each of us chose for our space collages. A lot of my peers and I shared why we chose the articles we did and a lot of it traced back to personal interest in a space topic. 

To find articles like this, one can search many places. Time magazine generally has a science section, but I chose the website Newsela. Newsela is a website that has articles about many educational topics or topics of leisure. I chose to use this website because the articles come from reliable sources. Some of the articles come straight for N.A.S.A. 

I would definitely use science articles in my future classroom. I think that they can be used to educate students on a new topic or to expand their knowledge on an old topic. Students can easily relate these articles to english. They can have an assignment to point out different parts of speech, make cross word puzzle and many other creative projects. Students can also gather many articles on one topic and make a collage like I did above. They could then present their collages to the class and explain why they chose them and why those articles are important for that topic of study. 

Trade Books and Book Trailers: The Little Raindrop

What is a book trailer you may ask? A book trailer is "a visual representation of a book. In one way book trailers are similar to a movie trailer; they are designed to interest a reader in a particular book" (Chance & Lesense, 2012). For my book trailer I focused on the book The Little Raindrop by Joanna Gray. This book is colorful and engaging to students while it walks them through the steps of the water cycle. It's main character is raindrop. This book could easily be done as a read-aloud and have the students infer what they think will happen to the raindrop. A lesson like this could easily be made into an inquiry based lesson using the 5E model.




Engage: To engage the students, a book trailer will be played.

• The purpose of the book trailer is to tease the students about what they are about to read. Ultimately, the students should want to immediately read the book after watching the book trailer. 

Explore: In the explore stage, the students would briefly be taught the stages of the water cycle.
Explain: In the explain stage, students can read the book in groups or have the book read aloud to them. Any time they see the raindrop go through a new stage they could write it down, raise their had, put their finger on their nose, etc.
Elaborate: In the elaborate stage, students could draw their own version of the water cycle. They would have to label the different phases and briefly explain what happens in each.
Evaluate: In the evaluate stage, students will get the chance to present their water cycles to the class and explain how the raindrop in the story passed through their water cycle.

I personally believe that a similar activity could be done with any trade book at any grade level. This particular book is suitable for grades K-2. I definitely plan on making more book trailers in my future career. I believe it is a great way to engage students as well as incorporate technology into the classroom. With older students, I would encourage them to create their own book trailers instead of the same old book report or test assignments.

To create my book trailer, I used Animoto. Animoto puts together text, pictures and video segments to make one long video. I personally believe that it us user friendly. The only downfall is that it isn't free. Some other tools that could be used to create a book trailer are iMovie, Keynote, Voicethread, Garageband, and Vimeo.

So all in all, book trailers have many uses in the classroom. I am very happy to have gotten the chance to make one.

Works Cited:
Chance, R.,  & Lesesne, T. (2012). Rethinking reading promotion: Old school meets technology. Teacher Librarian, 39(5), 26-28

Scientists: The Stereotypes

Every person has their own idea of what a Scientist looks like. Scientists are very over stereotyped. The article I chose to review was called "Breaking Science Stereotypes". In the article, it talked about a 4th and 5th grade group of students who were asked to draw a scientist. Their drawings were compared to the Draw-A-Scientist Test-Checklist (DAST-C). This check list was derived from a study of typical scientist stereotypes in 1983.

Some of the most common stereotypes in all of the drawings were:

• Scientist working indoors
• The Scientist was wearing a white lab coat
• The Scientist was wearing glasses

After the children's drawings were compared to the checklists, a scientist visited each class. The fourth grade class was visited by a female chemical engineer. She assessed the students prior knowledge and discussed with them what an engineer does. She made it very clear that an engineer does a lot more than just build things. She also encouraged female students to not be turned away from the profession of an engineer. There a not many women in the field of engineering, but there is no reason that they shouldn't be. Something that intrigued the students is that the woman wore a blue lab coat made of nannex, a fire resistant fabric. She then engaged students in a hands on activity and then compared them to the engineers of Silly Putty.

The fifth grade class was visited by a male physicist from a local university. Instead of wearing a lab coat, he wore a white shirt and a tie. He as well, assessed the students knowledge and learned that they consider themselves scientists because in their opinion, scientists make observations of things. With the fifth grade students, he performed a variety of physical and chemical reactions and then prompted them to do simpler ones, inferring and hypothesizing all of the way through.

After the scientists left, the teachers went on with their normal teaching. Then after four weeks have passed, students were asked to draw a scientist again and describe in words their characteristics as well as their work setting. The table below shows the difference between the students drawing before the scientist visited their class and after.

The second table was the same study done in two other schools. It is interesting to see how the scientist visiting impacted the students so greatly. 

The end of the article also said how in some cases, the scientists came back to the schools and visited the classroom on a monthly or every other month basis. When the scientists visited frequently, teachers saw that the students inquisition was higher and made inquiry lessons much easier. 

I think this activity is very important in a classroom. It is especially important for girls and children of any other decent other than caucasian. They need to see that they can be scientist too; you don't have to be a white male to be a scientist. With a study like this, eliminating the stereotypes of scientists can be done one elementary school at a time. 

Resources:

Bodzin, A., & Gehringer, M. (2001, January). Breaking Science Stereotypes. Retrieved March, 2016.

Science Fairs and Gummy Bears

This semester my class was assigned to create a Science fair project to bring to the Science Fair at Bishop Dunn Memorial School. Before we created our experiment and came up with our big question, we got to judge the middle school science fair. Judging the science fair in my opinion was more fun than making my own science fair project. Some of the middle schoolers had projects that were way beyond their years of intelligence. Some of the projects also inspired my project that you see above.

The project I chose to do was Gummy Bear Osmosis. My experiment consisted of me seeing if gummy bears would grow or shrink when I put them in different types of water. First I measured and weighed the gummy bears. Next, I measured out the water for each cup. I did two cups with pure water and two cups with salt water just to make sure my results were accurate. I placed the gummy bears in the cups and I left them for 24 hours. I checked them every few hours just to see if they were growing or shrinking. The gummy bears that were placed in pure water were starting to grow within the first few hours. The gummy bears placed in salt water, it was hard to see a difference at all.

My hypothesis was "If a gummy bear is placed in pure water, then it will grow. If a gummy bear is placed in salt water, then it will shrink." After 24 hours I took the gummy bears out and remeasured and reweighed them. My hypothesis of the gummy bear that was placed in pure water was correct. Those gummy bears doubled, possibly tripled in size. My hypothesis of the gummy bears placed in salt water was wrong. I thought the gummy bears would shrink, but the gummy bears actually grew a little bit.

If I could do my science experiment again, I would place gummy bears in more than just pure and salt water. I would place the gummy bears in other liquids such as lemon water, vinegar, oil and even milk. I would repeat the experiment the same way and see what gummy bear is the biggest at the end, which is the smallest at the end, and if some gummy bears have no change in size and weight at all.

Judging the science fair was something I would love to do again. It was so heart warming to see some of the children's eyes fill with passion as they told me about their projects, why they chose to do it and their trials and errors of each. Pictured below are two of the student projects that really stood out to me. They were well designed and far beyond the knowledge of what their peers did. These projects left me utterly impressed.

The Ecosystem of Fieldwork

It was so great to be back in front of the 5th grade class teaching whole class instruction! I certainly missed it over the winter break! This semester, my group taught about Ecosystems and Biomes. The direct instruction went great! The students were so into what they were learning and they really seemed to retain information. They learned about different Biomes as well as some of organisms in them. They also learned about some changes in the ecosystems as well as how the weather effects the plant and animal life and why some animals and plants couldn't survive in any other biomes that the one that they live in. Our second lesson was an inquiry lesson. The students had to work in groups to research why specific animals belong in the Biome that they do and then prove to their classmates why they think their animal belongs in their specific biome using the reattach that they had compiled.

Having the privilege to teach in the classroom is most certainly a learning process. By no means did my lessons go perfectly. There was some error in the way that the lesson was run and the organization of it...but its certainly something fixable and something I would definitely take into consideration next time I am planning or teaching any sort of lesson.

As far as assessment went, the students were given a pre-assessment beforehand and that served as the diagnostic assessment. The formative assessment was how well the students were taking notes in the direct instruction lesson. In the inquiry lesson, it was how well they were working with their group and coming up with information for their posters. The summative assessment of the direct instruction lesson was a vocabulary crossword puzzle; and for the inquiry lesson, the students wrote a letter to an imaginary pen pal about a biome of their choice. They were given guidelines to follow and the assignment was collected and graded.

What was somewhat upsetting is that some students took these assignments really seriously and other students couldn't have cared less. All of the teacher candidates put too much time and effort into these lessons and activities to have them not be taken seriously.

Preparing for fieldwork is always stressful; especially when an entire lesson is to be taught. This experience gave me great practice noticing the difference between direct instruction and inquiry. Direct instruction is teacher centered and inquiry is more student centered. Having to plan different types of lessons is a lot harder than it sounds, but having to do it gave me great practice and a more efficient understanding of it.

Implementing the lessons is definitely not as easy as it sounds. No matter how well a lesson is planned out, if something goes wrong, it goes wrong and as the teacher, you always need to be prepared for it. It doesn't matter how well the lesson is scripted or planned; the teacher always needs to have a back up plan. I know I had back-up plans for fieldwork. I can only hope that my co-teacher candidates did as well.

Watching my classmates teach as well made some of the mistakes that I know I made more obvious in a way that allowed me to be more aware of them and work on fixing them. Seeing their lessons also gave me many great ideas for my future classroom. It also showed me that it is obvious when effort is put into each part of the lesson and when effort is lacking in an area. I think all of my co-teacher candidates as well as my classmates did a great job in the classroom. We all need to remember that this is a learning process and we all will learn and grow from the experiences we took part of and the ones we watched.

All in all being in the classroom makes me very excited to be just a little closer to attaining my goal of becoming a teacher. I am looking forward to my next opportunity to teach a whole class instruction.

Alternate Forms of Formative Assessment

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A QUIZ! 

I repeat, FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A QUIZ!!! 

A huge mistake that many teachers make is taking time out of their class and their lessons to have students take a quiz. Quizzes every now and then are good, but a students' grade should not be based off of quizzes. After students study and take these quizzes, the information they "learned" is gone. They never really learned the information; they just memorize the information and regurgitate it onto the quiz. There are so many ways to make formative assessment engaging and memorable for the students.





Alternate Forms of Formative Assessment:

1. Index Card Summary/ Question.
    The students will receive an index card. On one side of the index card they will be asked to give the unit topic and an example of a big idea that they understand. They will be asked to write a small one sentence summary. On the flip side of the card they will be asked to write something that they do not fully understand yet. They will be instructed to pose it as a question.

2. One Minute Essay
    The students will be given a question that they will be able to answer in one minute that can display whether they clearly understand a concept or don't.

3. Exit Ticket
    This is similar to the One minute essay except the students will not be timed. Students will be given a question and they must answer it to the best of their knowledge. Students should not be able to use any notes, they should be able to answer the question from memory.

4. Journal Entry
    In this assignment, students will write about a topic or lesson in their journal following a lesson that is taught. Afterwards, the teacher can look at the journal to make sure that the objectives set forth are met as well as to check for understanding of the topic.

5. One Sentence Summary
    This assignment can be creative and engaging. Students are instructed to create a one sentence summary of the lesson. Ideally it would include who, what, when, where, why and how. It is great to see students creative side when it comes to this.

Those ideas are engaging and different from quizzes. I think quizzes are important, but the monotony of them needs to be broken up and I think these are great ideas to use. Of course as a teacher you will be walking around the room and observing the work of the students. You will be listening in on their conversations and seeing their ideas be put on paper. There is also the option to set up student conferences. These conferences will be used to ask students how they are doing and to focus them or refocus them . They could also be used to set up a time for a student to come and receive extra help on an assignment or topic.

Is Assessment of or for learning?

Assessment is a very versatile tool in any classroom. Many people assume that assessment is just the teacher giving a pen and paper exam, the students regurgitating information onto it, the teacher grading it, giving it back and moving on no matter what the scores are. 

This cycle is false. Assessment is used in many ways in the classroom. Assessment can be diagnostic. This form of assessment is used to see where students knowledge of a topic lies. Then there is formative assessment. This assessment happens on a daily basis in all of the activities that students participate in. This kind of assessment can be check for understanding questions, questions at the end of an experiment, or progress made on daily class work. The third type of assessment is summative assessment. This assessment is more formal. It measures students progress of learning from diagnostic learning on a topic. It could be an essay, a presentation, a poster, or any other kind of assessment that will summarize students learning of a topic. 

Then there is also Assessment Of learning and Assessment For learning. The table above explains the difference between Assessment of and for learning. All in all, assessment of learning is a more formal type of assessment. It would be considered summative assessment. It measures students learning growth over time. Assessment for learning is used to measure students knowledge of a topic and is used as a diagnostic form of assessment. It will help a teacher decide where he or she should go next with their lessons. Assessment for learning is much less formal than Assessment of learning. The table below compares and contrasts assessment for learning and assessment of learning. 

I definitely plan to use all three types of lessons in my future classes. Diagnostic, formative and summative assessment are all very important. They all serve their own purpose and are all equally important. I also plan to make some assessment for learning and some assessment of learning. Not every type of assessment necessarily needs a grade. Some of the assessments are just used to measure the students knowledge. 

With Inquiry, Now Everyone Can Solve Problems With E's!

What is Inquiry?

Inquiry is a 5 phase instructional cycle that forces students to use a "hands on-minds on" approach to learning. The instructional cycle is based off of the 5 e's.

The 5 E's are:
1. Engage
2. Explore
3. Explain
4. Elaborate
5. Evaluate

In the Engage stage, students' prior knowledge is activated. This is also where they make connection to things they have learned in the past and to experiences they have had in the past with the topic at hand. Having them make those past connections will allow them to make newer, deeper connections to the material throughout the process of inquiry. The goal of this stage is to spark their interest in the topic at hand.

In the Explore stage, students hands and minds are put to the test. This is where they begin to literally explore ideas and take part in tactile, "hands on-minds on" experiences. The idea behind this is to generate many hypotheses focusing on the topic at hand. This is where learners begin to share and compare their ideas, comments and questions.

In the Explain stage, this is where students finalize their questions and ideas and focus on analyzing the data and ideas that they have collected. The students may share their findings and contribute to someone else's ideas. This may make ideas seem more real to some students.

In the Elaborate stage, students will use the information and learning they have gained in the previous stages to make inferences and deductions about the topic at hand. Students also could begin to make connections to the material at hand in this stage because this is where they will begin to compare real life situations to the hypotheses they have made.

Last is the Evaluate stage. What is great about this stage is that this stage is built into the other 4 stages. This is basically the check for understanding. Ways this could be administered are through rubrics, checklists, interviews, or any other type of formative assessment. This is also the stage where another cycle can be started if the student is really interested in the topic at hand.

As a teacher, I do like the inquiry process because it provides my future students with the "hands on-minds on" experience that I really want to stress to them. I love that it provides ways for me to assess them at any point in time. I also love that it provides more than ample time for the students to work together and share the ideas that they are coming up with. I can't wait to bring inquiry and the 5e's into my future classroom.

Scientific Me

Everyone is a scientist in their own way! Even the toddler in the picture to the left. He is forever playing with his baby chemistry set, wanting to cook dinner with me, as well as many other things that involve the use of science or some sort of scientific knowledge.

 Whether people know it or not, some sort of science most likely intrigues them or fascinates them. Throughout school, exposure to science and different types of experiments is so important to young learners. There is not enough emphasis put on science in the classrooms these days.

Without this science education, students are missing out on so much of what is going on around them in the world. Some students find their career path at an elementary school age. Without the exposure to science, a good amount of students are missing out on that opportunity.

When I am a teacher, I plan to do my best to make lessons and activities include some sort of science, even if it is english or math based. I believe not only will these types of lessons make my students more interested, I also believe that it will make them into more well rounded adolescents and adults.

Linked here is the link to my Scientific Me essay. The essay talks about some of the positive Science experiences I had in my years of school.

Dr. Albert The Scientist!

I thought this activity deserved it's own blog post. On our first day, one of the very first assignments we had was to Draw A Scientist. Now, from being in a collegiate education program for almost 3 years now, I knew the catch to this was to find the stereotypes of a scientist, but I let my my first day of class excitement and my inner child take over and I doodled away.

Some of the stereotypes of a scientist are:
- they wear glasses
- have crazy hair
- work in a messy work place
- are male
- are lonely

It does need to be addressed that these are ONLY stereotypes. Plenty of women have had amazing impacts in the world of Science and have had their hand in many crucial scientific discoveries. I conformed to the stereotyping even more when I named my scientist Dr. Albert. Yes, I was thinking of the infamous Albert Einstein when I drew this, but him being one of the most influential scientist of all times, I thought it was only appropriate to dedicate this picture to him.

After we were all done, we took a walk around the classroom to see what everyone had drawn. It was a lovely gallery walk. It gave everyone a chance to see the thought process that each person in the class had. I think this is a great way of sharing with out taking the time of each individual person sharing their work.

I think this activity was awesome. It was fun for college students, I can't imagine how fun an elementary school child would find it. I definitely plan on adding this to my teacher tool box to use in the future!

WELCOME BACK

So the day has come! We are finally back in class and the blogging can recommence! I am so excited to be using my blog again but this time we are talking about science in the classroom. Today in class we talked about the Scientific Method and introduced it as the steps to take in Inquiry. We did this really fun activity called Mystery Bags. In the activity, the teacher holds up the bag to students and we each have to guess what is in the bag. After that we each got to hold the bag and for 5 seconds shake it, squish it, and see if we could detect what was in the bag. After our 5 seconds was up, we each wrote down what we thought was in the bag on a sheet of paper. After everyone had their 5 seconds with the bag we all pooled together what we thought was in the bag. Next we had to come up with ways we could test to see if our thought of objects are what is in the bag without opening it. Some ideas that were brainstormed were, weighing the thought of object and then weighing the bag and see if the weights are similar, putting the bag in water to see if it would float if the thought of object is floatable, and most obviously...open the bag. 

In this case everyone in my class had similar guesses of what was in the bag. It turns out we were pretty close as to what was in the bag. Though in most situations, we never get to find out what is in the bag or the box, but in this case, our teacher was kind enough to give us hints towards what was in the bag. 

I have a lot of goals this semester when it comes to learning to teach science in my future classroom. My first goal is to become more technological advanced in my science teachings. My second goal is to not let anyone inhibit my thoughts. I should speak my mind with what I am thinking because my ideas are just as valuable as everyone else's. 

The video above is just a few tricks with water and the liquids that are appealing and simple to do. Two of them that stood out to me the most were the Liquid bag with pencils and the writing on the paper one. For the first one, you fill a bag with water and then poke pencils through it and to the students surprise (and mine when I watched it) the bag does not break! The second experiment I really liked was an inverse water experiment. On plain white paper write the word "won". Put a glass in front of it and fill it with water, the paper will now say "Now" when you look through the glass. The same thing can be done with an arrow, as well as some math problems. I think all 10 of the experiments in the video are awesome, but those two stood out to me the most. 

On that note, off to the races we go for another awesome semester of learning, teaching, and science!

Pre-Blog

At the beginning of the previous semester, I felt confused and rather negatively towards blogging about my experience in the classroom. After a whole semester of it, I fell in love with it. I spent most of my break trying to come up with different things to blog about. Eventually I came to the conclusion to just wait until the semester began again to resume my blogging.

I am so excited to be blogging about my Science and Technology Methods course this semester. I cannot wait to share innovative ways of teaching Science, my reflections on course material, as well as my thoughts and experiences in the classroom. There is just something about Science that as always drawn my attention. As far as technology goes, I am very excited to learn more ways to bring technology into my classroom and to use it as a tool to aid my students' learning; not just as something for them to do to pass time.

With the new semester starting in a few days, I am looking forward to a fresh slate, new classes, and many new learning experiences. It's been a great winter break..but I am looking forward to getting back to work!