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.
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!
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!
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!
