I found this quote scrolling through Pinterest one day. Unfortunately, it's a little blury but the acronym is still the same. After seeing this quote, I have decided that I want this in my future classroom. It is a great motivator for the students, and myself, and it's very powerful for young minds. I live by quotes and acronyms so knowing that this would be a friendly reminder for my future students is what makes me happy. I can't wait for the day that one of them reads one of the lines and it affects their life positively because that is what I hope for.
I can't believe the spring semester had just ended! It really flew by. This semester in Science was definitely a tough one, but it taught me a lot about myself. We had a lot of work throughout the semester, but in the end I learned so much about myself and who I am as a teacher. I was nervous to take this and Social Studies methods at the same time, but I'm glad I did. Our fieldwork experiences have allowed us to teach to an after-school science program between the grades fourth through sixth. One of the many teaching philosophies that I have is I believe that learning is fun, so getting to show the students that was exciting for me. Each activity and lesson that I made made me that much closer to my dream of becoming a teacher. Also, seeing their smiling faces and knowing that I taught them new things made the lessons that much more exciting. I am looking forward to my future students one day and having the privilege to teach them like I taught in science.
As a future educator, I plan on doing a lot of book talks in my future classroom. Book talks are easy and fun summaries of specific books related to lessons. They usually last between 1 and 2 minutes and talk about things such as what the book is about, what grade level it is meant for, and how you would use the book in a lesson. They can be visual or audio only, but still easy to follow along with.
For one of the lessons I created, I based the lesson on the students creating a book talk. The students were asked to choose a book based on one of the forms of precipitation. They then had to read it and summarize the book for the whole class to understand what the book was about. The students could create the book talk using various types of digital tools such as Audio Boom or YouTube. This allowed them to get creative in explaining their thoughts on the book. The students were able to share what they have learned with the class which made it a learning experience for all.
On Saturday, April 22nd, thousands of people gathered in front of Washington Monument to turn Earth Day into an homage to science. They marched from Constitution Avenue to the foot of Capitol Hill.
The march began after the women's march on Washington, which was held the day after Trump's inauguration. The fight is centered on science, education and planet earth.
When I found out about this march, I was a little surprised that there even is one. Then, I looked more into it and realized that science is not as "talked" about as many think it is. That is why this march came to be. As human beings living on this beautiful planet earth, we need to take care of every inch of it. This march is a friendly reminder to do so and to be mindful of our everyday habits.
Jigsaw learning is a cooperative learning technique. In order to use the Jigsaw learning technique, you first break up the class into groups of 3-5 students. These groups are the "home groups." Each student within their home group is assigned a different aspect of a topic. For example, if the topic that the students were studying was animals, each member of the home group would be assigned a different aspect of the topic animals, such as mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish. After the students are assigned their aspect, they meet up with the students from the other groups who were assigned the same aspect. For example, all the students who were assigned the aspect mammals meets up with one another. This becomes the students "expert groups." The students work with their expert group to become experts on their aspect. After the students become experts on their aspect, they return to their home groups and teach each other about their aspect. By the end, students have an understanding of the whole topic.
This article that I found on the Science News website talks about how snow actually is calming in certain respects. I found this article to be interesting because it is true, when it snows the world around us seems to get quieter and more relaxed. According to this article, snow absorbs commercial sounds a lot better than rain can. On average, snow absorbs about 60% of the sound which is why it is so calming during and after the snow falls.
I also chose this article because it relates to my unit plan as well as the lessons that my group and I taught for fieldwork. This article is easy to follow and very informative.
A main part of science is staying updated on what is going on in the world. In order to know and understand, it is important to always look for articles and read to keep up to date on facts. In my future classroom, I would have my students look up current events and articles based on a specific topic they are interested in. This gives the students the option to research information they are interested in and learn more. This would mostly be an individual based assignment because each student might be interested in something different. Research is so important for students to know how to do. In each short little article, you can learn so much more than you ever have before.
It is the day of our lesson and we are all on edge. We have prepared so much for this one day that we knew it was all going to pan out. Before the students arrived, we had everything set up and ready to go, however we did start a little later due to the arrival of some late students which shortened our time. The introductions went well initially. Then, we started to go over each topic and we slowly realized that the time was ticking too fast. We had to cut out our Kahoot review activities and our independent practices. My group was just watching the clock as we realized that we still had so much more to do...
Due to this, our goal was to just get through the lesson and so we skipped over directions and explanations, but didn't intend to do so. It just kind of happened and we all didn't realize until we started getting feedback about the lesson. Here is the link to our direct and inquiry lessons and here is the link to our presentation.
Once we got to the inquiry part of the lesson, we just jumped right in which was not the greatest idea. We planned to split the students up into groups so they could rotate and complete each activity, however due to the time constraint, we only had one group per activity and no rotation occurred. After the students completed the activities (ex. the cloud in a bottle), the students shared their hypothesis and results with the class and the parents. This also concluded the lesson.
Overall, I am extremely proud of my group. We put a lot of time and effort into this one day for it to go all wrong. At the end of it, we still all left with smiles on our faces and learned so much in that short amount of time. I am thankful for the experiences we have had planning and teaching the lesson.
