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!