Time Flies When You're Learning!

I cannot believe the ending is here! I am officially finished with my science methods course and have survived! What an awarding feeling this is! Throughout the course of this semester I have reflected on my experiences in our Science Methods and Technology course. I wrote a blog post just about every week expressing my feelings towards something we learned or writing about overwhelming, incredible experiences like fieldwork. I also reflected on projects I created like the science fair, research article review, science in the news, etc! I highly enjoyed writing my blog posts as it really forced me to dig deep into important science concepts and teaching techniques. I can now look back at the posts I wrote in the beginning of the semester to see how much I have improved and learned since then. I can even look back in a year or two from now and see a much greater improvement, which is very exciting! 

I chose the title "Shannon's Exploration Through Science" because science is truly an exploration and I knew I was going to be exploring a lot about Science. I was right because I learned so much about not only science, but TEACHING science, which is so important to me right now as I am studying to be a teacher. Through exploring science, I have learned how to create different types of effective lesson plans, taught a class for the very first time, implement these lesson plans into that class, learned a lot about EDTPA that will help me tremendously as I student teach next year, learned about numerous ways to integrate technology into a classroom and was introduced to a variety of different digital tools to use in a classroom one day.The list goes on and on, but I have learned so much from this course that I will take with me into my future teaching career that will help me create success among all of my students. I enjoyed exploring through science so much this semester and I cannot wait to explore science in my own classroom on day!

I also had the opportunity to comment on other peoples blog posts and their titles! I think having a catchy title to a blog is important to really grab the audiences attention! Here are some screenshots of my feedback on my peers blog titles!

I also commented on my peers actual blog posts! Here are the links to some of the comments.

Mallory's Science Methods Experiences

Courtney's Journey to Discovery in Science

Amanda's Learning to Teach Science Experience

Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists!

  Many elementary schools have been hosting science fairs for their students for many years now. Many students have this misconception that science is about mindlessly memorization and step by step procedures, rather than interactive, live experiments and processes. Len Kenyon, a former marine science researcher who teaches sixth-grade science at Tippecanoe Middle School in Tipp City, Ohio has been monitoring students through science fair projects since he began teaching. He is working to change this kind of thinking students have about science. Kenyon states “Students have these misconceptions…they think science must be conducted in a cookbook sequence. I teach my kids that science is a process. It’s messy, it’s here, it’s there. They might be doing something and all of a sudden they get data they didn’t expect to get and suddenly they’re off on a tangent. That’s real science.” (Kenyon, 2011).

Science fairs are beneficial to students for a numerous of reasons. First, students are actually educating the teachers and families themselves about their projects. The role is being reversed, which is incredible. They get to tell you their discoveries and show you how their experiment works. This can be very exciting and rewarding for students as they feel like they are teaching someone else, opposed to always being taught. The best thing is that they are still learning while they are doing this. They are learning the scientific method, how to research their topic (which expands their literacy skills), advancing their speaking and and communication skills, and they are realizing that science is not all about boring notes and explicit instruction.

At tippecanoe middle school in Ohio, science fairs are optional and students develop projects with guidance from their teachers and through a local science club. A majority of the science teachers at this school agree on the importance of helping their students come up with ideas that allow them to participate in the science fair and become part of the scientific process (Mascarelli, 2011). Michaela Iiames, who teaches fifth- and seventh-grade science at St. Timothy’s School in Raleigh, N.C., has been doing science fairs with her students for eight years.  Iiames asks them to begin with journaling about their everyday interests. Liames states “We’re trying to really hook them into science and seeing how science concepts can be applied in their everyday life, not just with test tubes and chemicals” (Liames, 2011).

A major key to science fairs are creating a positive experience for students whether they win or not, and directing them to feel like they own their ideas and experiments. Science fairs can be a huge commitment, but teachers agree that the process is so delightful for students, teachers, families, and the community. Susan Duncan, a science teacher at Summa Academy at Meadow Park Middle School, keeps in mind a lesson that her own mentor taught her: The main goal should be to teach students how to become researchers. “So whether they go on to language arts or to become journalists or lawyers or doctors, they’ll leave with these research skills” Duncan concludes.

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/science-fairs-teaching-students-think-scientists

Reflection on Assessment and Instruction

This years fieldwork experience for the Science methods course I am currently enrolled in was an incredible learning opportunity. Over the course of four weeks, my group and I had the chance to teach two lessons in a 6th grade science classroom, and then observe three other groups lessons. It is a complete different ball game when you are teaching a whole class opposed to working one on one with a kid, or simply sitting in the back of a classroom observing the teacher. I have learned so much from teaching in front of a classroom and implementing the designed lessons plans into the classroom, collaborating with peers, writing different types of lessons, and observing peers. I am excited to share and reflect on my fieldwork experiences.

My group was group 1 and we had to go first. This was very nerve wracking for us and a little more of a challenge since we did not get to see the other groups teach before us. Every group had to give each other constructive criticism and it would have been a lot more effective to listen close to feedback from other groups and then apply that and improve our lessons and teaching. But, unfortunately we did not have that opportunity. Someone has to go first though! We still were able to learn from other groups and our own groups mistakes for our future teaching which was very beneficial for everyone.

We were instructed to create and teach a direct instruction lesson and an inquiry lesson. The direct instruction lesson is geared towards teaching through explicit instruction and personally I find these the most difficult. It is hard to make your students focus and retain all of the information from direct lessons, where the teacher is doing all of the talking and presenting all of the information. The students are not involved and are most likely instructed to take notes or fill out a vocabulary packet. Direct instruction lessons are super important, but also very challenging. The students need to learn the information the teacher is presenting on a specific topic, and learn all of the vocabulary to keep moving forward and participate in a cooperative or inquiry for the following lesson. Our group combined a direct instruction lesson with an inquiry lesson. I believe we did this wrong as other groups combined inquiry and cooperative, which makes more sense. Then again, we were the first group and would have done it the right way if we had seen previous lessons. For our inquiry and direct, we taught about minerals and how to identify minerals, and then the students had mineral kits and actually got to identify two minerals in groups. We each worked with a group and helped the students identify their minerals. I realized and learned that this was not direct instruction, and they were split into groups and the information was not straightforward presented to the students with the teacher in front of the classroom. We can only learn from our mistakes because as a teacher, it is very important to drill down the steps of teaching direct instruction in order to drill the information into the students. Creating inquiry lessons were also a challenge but teaching them to me is a little easier because the students are able to follow a procedure. This procedure being the scientific method. Students will always have a chart of can find anywhere the steps to the scientific method, and then apply those steps to their experiment. Inquiry methods can also be fun for students because they are creating an experiment by developing questions and investigating to find solutions. This is what science is all about and is why inquiry lessons are also very important. Implementing these lessons into an actual classroom was a huge learning experience for everyone, especially since it was most of our first time ever teaching in a classroom and creating our own lessons. It has taught all of us so much from just such a short period time. I have especially learned that just because you have a written lesson plan, does not mean you will follow it precisely and that it won't change. If students are not understanding the lesson and what you are doing, you must stop and go back, or completely change the lesson. What is the point of teaching a lesson if the students are not comprehending what you are teaching? It is very important to be prepared for this and not just keep teaching because you have it all written out and planned out in the lesson. It is also very important to realize when your students are not retaining the information and learn how to correctly check for understanding.

The second part to the fieldwork experience was to observe the lessons taught by our classmates. This was also a great learning experience because we learned how to give constructive criticism and feedback that will benefit them for future teaching. Some of the feedback was a little harsh given by other peers, but in the long run it will only help us in the future so we can learn from our teaching flaws. It really helped all of us and gave us tips on how to become a better teacher, as we are all still learning what works and what does not. By giving each other feedback from the observations we can all learn from this and make changes for our future teaching to make ours students more successful.

Overall, I have taken in so much from these 4 weeks of fieldwork. One of the main things I have learned is the importance of being prepared for anything, and I hate to say it, but sometimes the worst. For example, we found out when we had got to the classroom that the internet had been down and we did not have access to it. We were prepared for this, but not 100% as we uploaded the wrong powerpoint onto the drive. We got very flustered at first which affected our first half of the lesson, but we ended up pulling it together and rolled with the punches and just kept moving along. It is so important to not rely on technology as it does crash a lot and depending on the area you are working it, an impoverished school may not even have full access to the internet or any at all. This courses fieldwork has had a tremendous impact on me and I have learned so much that I will definitely take with me as I strive to become a better teacher day after day.

Trade Book Experience!

Trade books can be used in a variety of ways in a classroom. They are great to start a lesson or unit off with, background reading, do a book talk with, create projects from, and they provide numerous research opportunities for pretty much any topic you choose. Trade books are educational and enjoyable at the same time and make learning fun and meaningful. Trade books can also be geared toward a specific learning need and can be used to differentiate instruction which is very important for all types of learners.

For one of our assignments in class, we were instructed to do a trade book project. My trade book was on rocks and minerals which I had previously taught 2 lessons on with my group for fieldwork. The book was an excellent read and I highly recommend it to anyone teaching science! The title of the book is A Project Guide to Rocks and Minerals by Claire O’Neal. This book stood out to me because the cover page was intriguing and contains pictures of really cool, unique minerals. As I skimmed through the book, there was so much kid friendly information on rocks and minerals and had an experiment or project for each sub topic. For example, one experiment teaches you how to grow your own minerals and your own salt crystal garden, and geode! It tells you all the materials necessary needed to make the projects and step by step instructions.

I made an animoto and did a book talk on my tradebook including pictures and experiments from the book. We had to make a book trailer for our books which was a lot of fun and super simple! You were able choose your own theme and song. You could add pictures and put a little caption on the pictures, or just put the pictures, or just the words! It was a great learning experience and I would definitely use animoto in my own future classroom one day. I could have students create their own trailers for a book or a topic, introduce a topic by showing the animoto, or even show them an animoto to choose a book to read! There are so many ways to implement these awesome tools into a classroom and I am very excited to keep learning more about them and use them!