Trade Book Experience

My trade book experience was a great one! I went to the Newburgh Free Library and picked out a book on minerals. The title of the book is Rocks and Minerals. This is a great book for teachers because it goes into depth on different types of minerals. It even gives you hands on activities to teach students in the book with pictures of each step. Students will love these real life pictures and will want to read more about the beautiful minerals and rocks! Many students have misconceptions about rocks and minerals that they are all the same. This book gives you easy activities to do with the students in the classroom or at home. 

Making the animoto about my book was also a ton of fun! I took pictures from the book and I feel that this book sells itself! The beautiful pictures in this book are absolutely breathtaking. This is a great book to introduce the topic to the students. It is definitely easy to follow and goes over the what, where, how and why of these interesting rocks/minerals.
 

This book is a great way to break misconceptions! Going over the different types of minerals breaks the stereotype that all minerals are the same. Going over the differences between rocks and minerals connects to the students to break the stereotype that rocks and minerals are the same thing. 

RAR

I loved the article that I chose, What a Surprise-They're Flies! This is an article on inquiry and what I loved reading about was that the teacher changed her lesson plan due to the students' interests. The students found  "worms" at the bottom of the class guinea pig's cage. The whole class was curious if these were really worms and why they were there. The teacher then designed her lesson to make observations about these "worms" as a class. The whole class worked together as a team to discuss what these "worms" were. They did experiments on them and figured out that the black end was the creature's head and that the other end was its tail. The students then made the decision as a class from observations that it was a larva. They also got the experience to learn about the life cycle of a fly first hand! This was awesome because students made observations on something that they were very curious about. This stimulated inquiry and the children learned based off of observations. Students also learned how to collaborate together and make conclusions based off of their own observations. This is something that learning from the textbook could not do. This hands on experience gave the students the opportunity to work together as a whole and watch the fly go through it's life cycle. The students were able to see the fly go through its life cycle a

nd see how long each stage takes. I would definitely use this technique in my classroom. Allowing my students to see an animal's life cycle in real life allows them to make observations each day and they will remember the information better because they are experiencing the cycle first hand compared to in a text book. I love how the class worked together as one and discussed their observations. I will definitely use this technique in my future classroom. 

Science in the News

Science is really everywhere! I was able to go on the internet and find hundreds of articles for students about all different types of science! We were assigned to find articles on space. My group and I created a timeline  to show some recent events that happened involving space science! This would be a great tool if a teacher assigned a research paper because it shows a time line in the order of which the events happened and students would be able to choose what topic they would want to research based off of a small preview. I also made a glogster to show all of the different websites I used. This is a fun way to incorporate science in the classroom without using a boring traditional powerpoint. These are easy tools that even students could use! 

One article that I really enjoyed reading was an article I found on a new planet beyond pluto. This is so exciting to me because it shows how technology is allowing us to find new discoveries. This may lead to a whole new world beyond what we know exists. I also enjoyed reading about the super moon that just recently happened! I read this article and then a couple days later was able to see this moon in person. It was honestly so breathe taking! Another article I enjoyed reading about was the belief of life on other planets. This is another interesting topic because imagine life on other planets, living people like you and me on a whole world we had no idea existed!! Do they have cars? Do they live in houses? Who knows! I really hope one day we find out! 

Skype in the Classroom

Today was such a fun class day! We had the opportunity to Skype with a class from Kansas. This is a great way to communicate with other teachers, students ,etc. I will definitely use Skype in my future classroom. The teacher, Andrea Friend, told us that Skype is used to teach not only science,but all subjects at any age. When we were on Skype the students tried to guess where we are located by asking questions. This really makes the students use the inquiry process.The teacher wrote down the questions we asked and the questions that the class asked us. After the class also discussed what were good questions that they said to figure out our location. Andrea was also telling us how she uses Skype all throughout the day and loves it! Her class traveled many miles just by using Skype! The students really enjoy being able to use a dry erase map to try and figure out our location. This was an awesome activity and I can't wait to use Skype in my future classroom! 

KA 7

Teaching in the classroom has been a fantastic experience. Not only have I learned from a hands-on experience but I also learned from my classmates. This experience made me feel like a real teacher from lesson plans to hands on teaching students. Working together with other teacher candidates was also a great experience that I will use in the future. This experience has taught me how to actively use  strategies of teaching such as direct, inquiry and cooperative teaching by creating these types of lessons and teaching them to the class. Being able to see how students reacted to my lessons was also a great learning experience.

After giving the students a pre-test we learned that they did not know much about minerals. This taught us to teach the students more about minerals. Students learn differently so we designed our lesson plans to help every type of learner understand the material. On the first day, we taught directly from the smart board for the more traditional learner. We spoke loud and clearly for students who learn from listening to information. We provided hand-outs for the students who learn better from reading or in case they did not hear everything we said. We also had the students go through the different steps of inquiry when we asked them questions before, during and after the streak, luster, and hardness tests on the minerals for the more hands-on learners.

By having the students write a letter to Ms.Mineral we assessed them on what they learned from our first lesson. This taught us that most of the students understood the tests they performed during class. For the next lesson, we went more in depth on different minerals. We spilt the students into groups of three or four and each teacher candidate went to a group.

Teaching in a group has many advantages. By having each teacher candidate have their own group we saw what each student knows and what they need to work on. We had the students make their posters as a group on certain minerals to further their knowledge. The groups shared different information about their mineral posters to teach the whole class.

            Being part of the first group was very scary. We did not know what to expect or how the students would react to what we were teaching. My group worked hard together. We learned from our first time teaching to be more organized and share the floor with each teacher candidate. Watching my peers teach their lessons also was a great learning experience. I would have never thought that I could model the rock cycle out of crayons like Group 3 did! I learned from Group 2 a nice trick to stay organized is to use Popsicle sticks to call students to share to save time and keep the lesson flowing. I learned from Group 4 how to move on from tough situations when a student made an inappropriate statement but they moved on nicely and continued to teach. Overall throughout my college career I would say that this was the most helpful experience so far. It was very hands on and I learned so much in such a short period of time. 

             This experience also taught me how to write different lesson plans. Going through the steps of inquiry in a science class is very important. The design for my group's lesson plan was to do a more of a hands-on technique. We learned that we were not supposed to do our inquiry and direct lessons together. For the direct lesson we taught the students off of the smart board about minerals. We mostly focused on using the steps of inquiry by having the students perform tests on the different minerals.

My group provided our students with a scientific method chart to show the students the different steps of inquiry.

             After seeing my classmates' lessons and how they designed their lesson plans I know for next semester how to do my lesson plans the correct way. This experience also allowed me to work with different types of students. For example, there were many behavior problems in that classroom. I learned how to handle them and try to keep them on track by saying they would get a "color change" if they did not do what was asked of them. Overall I learned how to work with other teachers to get the job done!  

  

Science Fairs in Elementary Schools

Science fairs in elementary schools are extremely important. When I was in elementary school I always looked forward to attending the science fair. These are great experiences for children because they get to see science in a hands on way. Children use the scientific method and are often very excited to share what they learned at science fairs. Not only do the students share their own experiments but they also get to actively walk around and learn about their peers' experiments. Science fairs broaden students' opportunities for scientific inquiry. Science fairs encourage students to ask questions, analyzing and interpreting data. They also encourage students' interest in science. 





After doing some research I found that science fairs have been happening for years. They do make students use the inquiry process which is great and allows students to explain their experiences. According to http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/fairs.html elementary schools participate in science fairs for various reasons. Some of these reasons include to stimulate students' interests in science, opportunities to research and inquiry, and many more! Science projects  are done in many different ways and allow students to use their creativity. Students extend their knowledge on topics and experiencing experiments make the students remember the information better. 

Last Day of Fieldwork

Today was a very sad day because it was the last day of fieldwork. I am really going to miss my students. They were all so nice and smart. I would definitely consider teaching sixth grade. After group four went the whole class gave out certificates to the students. The students seemed to really love them. I'm not going to lie it was really hard saying good bye to the students. This was a very intelligent group of students and I truly enjoyed working with them.This was a great learning experience and built up my confidence in teaching in front of a class.