Today was an awesome day for me. I had such a rewarding experience. Two of the students that were in my group gave me cards and asked if I was teaching again. These girls are really the sweetest people I have ever met. It was such an honor to receive these cards. I was so touched and could not have been any happier. This really made me so excited to become a teacher. These girls wrote the nicest things and I am truly going to miss them when field work is over. The time and detail in these cards are really amazing. I hope one day in my classroom I have students like these two. I can not explain how great the feeling was to receive these cards. I will definitely keep these cards forever and it really is great motivation hearing that they think I will be a great teacher some day. The fact that they want me to teach again is really so rewarding. To hear that I made science fun for them and made them understand minerals made me feel so happy because that was my goal. All of the hard work really paid off even if the lesson did not go exactly how I planned. Today was one of the best days for me and I really am so happy I am in the field that I love.
Today Group 2 went for the second time and they did great! They were very organized and the kids seemed to have fun. The purpose of this lesson was to tell the difference between igneous and sedimentary rocks. The students were given different colors of play-doh and they had to create their own rocks. I really liked how the students were able to pick a popsicle stick because it made for an easier transition. It is hard to believe that we are half way through the groups! I can already see the students' knowledge growing and their understanding of rocks and minerals expanding. These students are very advanced for their grade and very well behaved. Sixth graders can sometimes be fresh to the teachers but these students are always well behaved and listen to the teachers. I am really going to miss working with these students.
Today Group Two presented their lesson. I thought it was very organized and well prepared. The class learned about two different types of rocks. Group Two spoke about the differences between igneous and sedimentary rocks. I was happy to see that the posters that our group made with the class were still up. The kids really seemed to love making the posters on the different minerals. My group loved the Pyrite, also known as fools gold. They loved the luster of the mineral. I loved doing this activity with my group and would definitely do this activity in my future classroom. The class also loved the excitement of the competition between classmates.
Today was a very fun day. It was the first sixth grade mineral show!! The kids really seemed to enjoy the mineral show. Each group made a poster of their mineral. We gave the kids twenty minutes and then they were able to walk around and vote for their favorite mineral. The students got really into this and were excited to walk around and see everybody's mineral poster. On the voting ticket the students had to write why they chose that mineral. We gave every student a certificate and the winning group received medals. The students still believe Ms. Mineral is real and that they were doing this mineral show for her. The posters that the students made were kept hung up in their science room. The students really enjoyed this activity. I was even asked by a student if we could do this activity again next time!
Today was my group's turn to teach the sixth grade class at Sacred Heart School science. Our first lesson did not go as planned. We found out when we got there that there is no internet in the room we taught in. This was a curve ball thrown at my group. We had a Voki named Ms. Mineral that was supposed to deliver a It was also a good lesson because it shows us that plans changed. We were very happy that we had a back up plan. Although we were all taken back by having to use our back up plan I feel that we handled the situation very well. We definitely have room for improvement however, being the first group I felt we did a great job. We now know how the room is set up , how much time we have and what materials we have access to. I feel that next lesson it will definitely be so much better. Some of the kids were very rowdy. After using the "color changing" technique the students seems to be more well behaved. The "color change" is when the students miss behave their colors get changed and they can not play recess. This is definitely a technique I would use in my classroom.
