My Final Methods Course

Today is the day I had my FINAL methods course at my school! Where has the time gone? I have learned so much and gained so much knowledge on everything in regards to teaching. The next step...STUDENT TEACHING! I am extremely nervous about it, but I know that it will be a rewarding experience for me. I have gained so much knowledge that I will be able to bring to the classroom I am placed in. Not only will I use the ideas that I have learned, but I will reference back to strategies and activities my own professors used with me to help enhance my own knowledge. There were many methods classes that I took, but the one that I will focus on is the LAST one I will ever take, which is Science and Technology Methods for Childhood Education!

Dr. Smirnova has taught me all I needed to know when it comes to teaching science, especially using technology. The biggest takeaway from this course was when I created and implemented my unit plan on Weather and Water with my fieldwork group members. The process was stressful because we had to create an entire unit plan in under a week, but with the limited time we did have, it went extremely well! This course has definitely taught me about time management. I now know how to create a lesson plan under pressure!! Working with my group members was amazing because we all worked so well together. We created an awesome unit plan that the students really seemed to enjoy! We related the material to real life experiences, especially through our Inquiry lesson. We were introduced to using Web Quests in the classroom, which made us extremely eager to include that in our own unit plan. I loved using this tool because it was unfamiliar to me, yet it was extremely effective! Another interesting tool that we used in the classroom was ThingLink. I have used this website before to create a digital me presentation, but not in the same way we used it for this course. For Science Methods, we created a 360 degree interactive lesson about the sensory garden at Bishop Dunn! A 360 degree image of the sensory garden was provided and we have to create a 5E Inquiry lesson to put into the ThingLink. This was such a creative idea that I would have never thought was possible. Even though the lesson wasn't actually going to be given to real students, it was a great experience! Learning about new tools in the classroom really made become more aware of what technology is out there! Technology is definitely my biggest takeaway from this specific methods course. Science is definitely not my strongest subject, but there are so many interesting and creative ways to teach this subject. 

This course really made me reflect on my own teaching. This was my 2nd time teaching a unit plan to a REAL group of students! This time around I could tell that I was much more comfortable, especially with my great group members! There's definitely a lot I need to work on in order to feel 100% confident in my teaching, but I know that I'm in the right direction! I accomplished a lot within this class and displayed it all on my electronic portfolio. Check out my e-folio at this link! 

Now that it's the last day.....LET'S CELEBRATE!!

edTPA & E-folio's

Without the experience of practicing for edTPA and creating an electronic portfolio of the work I completed for my Science Methods course, I would not be where I am today in the education program. Having this practice really makes me a stronger educator and allows me to be much more organized. When an education major hears the term "edTPA," they typically get extremely stressed out and worrisome. I now feel incredibly prepared to complete and submit the real edTPA for Student Teaching, once the time comes. Obviously it is still difficult and I'm going to need a lot more practice and guidance, but becoming familiar with it now has really made me become much more confident in myself. In Science and Social Studies Methods, we are introduced to the three tasks of edTPA based off of our unit plan. The tasks we have to complete are based off of the classroom environment, context for student learning, assessment commentary, video commentary, and much more. The documents do look very intimidating but once you get the hang of it, completing it is a breeze. Providing intense amount of detail in the tasks only makes you that much better of a writer and educator! Also, working alongside my fieldwork group members during this entire process makes it all that much easier. We are able to get together, discuss the different tasks and look back upon our unit plan. I know a few education majors who don't even know what edTPA is and that they've never heard of it or seen it before. I think being introduced to it so early on has been a life changing experience for me as an education major. If I have never seen it before or know how to complete it, during student teaching I'd be incredibly confused. I now feel confident that I am capable of completing it, but may need a little guidance along the way when it comes to submitting and passing it to become a teacher!

Another great tool I used in the education program was creating an electronic portfolio of the work I completed for my Social Studies & Science Methods course. During SS Methods, I have never even heard of an e-folio before and at the time, it was very stressful because it was thrown upon us towards finals week. I am one to stay organized and neat so being introduced to this was great for me because I easily caught on to the entire concept. I loved adding pictures, text, links, and quotes to my e-folio in order to personalize it to what I enjoy. Creating an e-folio is a great way to stay organized! I was able to link all of my assignments, lesson plans, activities, attachments, edTPA documents and much more all on one e-folio! Creating it is a little time consuming, but definitely worth it. Now that I am in Science Methods, I know exactly how to utilize my e-folio. I completed it way earlier than I did last semester and now have one less assignment to worry about! Making the e-folio, to me, is incredibly fun because of how personal I can make it!

Learning Through Other Presentations

Today was a great opportunity for me and my other classmates in Science Methods. Each of us created our own ThingLink interactive lesson plans based off of our unit plan topics. Even though me and my 2 group members shared very similar information, our lessons were incredibly different on the ThingLink platform. We were prompted to include the link and information to our ThingLink lesson into this power point presentation for the entire class to view. Along with the link to the interactive lesson, we had to include a picture of ourselves, name of the lesson, picture of the ThingLink, our certification program, description of the purpose of the lesson and a quote about teaching science. What we were supposed to do was get up to the front of the class and present each of our ThingLink lessons and receive comments and feedback. What our professor decided to do was let fieldwork groups one and two and three and four get together and show our lessons to each other. We each got the opportunity to click through each other's lesson and explore the different aspects of it. Viewing everyone's lessons was a great opportunity because I got to personally see how different and creative everyone's lessons were! Along with viewing each lesson, we provided comments to one another in this document. Rather than be rushed to jot down three pluses and one wish in a discussion post, having the time to really think about our comments and write them down on our own time was very beneficial. Also, having the access to explore each other's lessons on our own time was better than seeing a presentation. A lot of the presentations were very similar when it came to linking to articles, videos, and much more for the students to complete, so a presentation of each one would have been very repetitive. It was rewarding to see how creative some of the teacher candidate's got with their own personal lessons. I got access to many new ideas that I never heard of that I will definitely use with my future students. This ThingLink interactive lesson was a completely different concept that I was never used to, but opened the doors to so many new opportunities! I learned to love this program and think of many different creative ways to make an outstanding lesson. I really enjoyed seeing everyone else's lessons as well, just to see how they handled this new approach. Learning through other presentations is a great way to get new ideas for your own teaching!

Misconceptions Presentation

Presenting on misconceptions and how to reduce them from happening in the classroom was a great, and new experience for me. Many students distort their ideas of certain topics because of tv, movies, games, and much more. It is important to discuss what is actually fiction and reality. It isn't good for students to think these misconceptions and never figure out what's right and what's wrong. Discussing misconceptions in the classroom is an amazing way to clear the air and teach students what is true or false, regarding specific topics. In my class, me and 2 other group members had to share misconceptions on space travel, life in the desert, and rocks and minerals. Researching different conceptions for each topic was interesting because a lot of what we found online, I used to think about when I was in elementary school. Some of the misconceptions we found were ridiculous but a lot of them really made me think of my elementary years and how naive I was, until my teachers cleared my mind and told me what was actually correct. Along with talking about the misconceptions, we had to come up with objectives for each topic pertaining to using the inquiry skills of using space/time relationships, using numbers, and observing. Through this activity, our group learned that we were creating objectives wrong this entire time! We learned so much through this activity, from our own experiences and listening to the 3 other groups present! Overall, these presentations were great and extremely informative. The most helpful thing to me personally was creating so many objectives. It helps me become a better teacher and write a rocking lesson plan!

Click here to check out the misconceptions presentation our class created!

Below you can see the three pluses and one wish format I used when listening to the other groups present on their misconception topics!

Group 2: Kelly, Bailey and Meghan

Three Pluses:
1. I liked how you fixed your own mistakes during your objective presentations.
2. Great misconceptions!
3. The tasks of your objectives were great and very creative.

One Wish:
I wish that some of your objectives were a little more clear, some of them I wasn't exactly sure what you wanted the student to complete.

Group 3: Cierra, Cassandra, Ganny, Marie

Three Pluses:
1. I liked that you were able to go back and fix your objectives so they align with the other groups format.
2. You had very creative objectives!
3. You were very cooperative when it came to constructive feedback regarding your objectives.

One Wish:
I wish that some of your objectives were more clear. The wording of some of them made them difficult to understand.

Group 4: Tara, James and Olivia

Three Pluses:
1. I liked how you were able to accept constructive feedback from the class and Dr. Smirnova and revise your objectives.
2. I liked how James included a little humor into the presentation to make it more engaging.
3. You came up with great activities to do with the students in your objectives.

One Wish:
Since you were the last group, I wish that you took the time to revise your objectives on your own time, based off of the previous group presentations.

Thinglink Challenge

Today I completed the ThingLink Challenge! This was an assignment that went along with my Weather and Water Unit Plan for the 4th grade class at Bishop Dunn Elementary School. The lesson plan I created was based upon the 5E Inquiry Lesson. Click here to view my Hyperlink Doc Lesson Plan!

Students are to follow 5 steps: 

Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate.

Engage: Students will play a review Kahoot! game in regards to weather and water before exploring new topics, skills, concepts, or processes.

Explore: Students will review the Weather and Water Powerpoint. Then, in partners, read the article Water in Soil and pay attention to how water enters soil and important key terms like drainage, leaching, and field capacity. After reading this article, independently type out on Padlet what you learned from this article regarding water in soil, define the three key terms listed above, and write down one fact you didn’t know before reading this article.

Explain: In partners, watch the Importance of Water Video and turn and talk with your partner about what you learned and answer the following questions on the Google Docs. Then, Revisit the Weather and Water Powerpoint and focus on slides 37-39. These slides talk about plants in the four different seasons. Discussing with a partner, on an online Whiteboard, draw out each of the four seasons and how plants during that season would look like. You must include all four seasons and label each one.

Elaborate: Read this article on how water can affect a plants growth and reflect in a blog post about what you learned. You must include at least 2 paragraphs in your blog regarding this article. Then, watch this video on 5 things that plants need in order to survive. You and a partner will create a visual poster board about the 5 needs of plant survival and explain into depth why each of those needs are important to a plants growth. You should include pictures, drawings, facts, diagrams, etc. The poster board will be presented to the front of the class after completion.

Evaluate: Using all of the data, articles, videos, information, you collected throughout this Hyperlink Doc, you will write a short essay here on why water is so important to a plants survival, draw a diagram of the water cycle, and include at least 3 facts you learned from this experience. You will reference the following writing checklist. Reflect on this experience in your blogs as well!

This entire lesson is also all laid out on a website called ThingLink. A 360 degree picture of the sensory garden at Bishop Dunn was uploaded so students can take a look at how the sensory garden looks at all times. The following 5 steps that I created are provided in the picture. Different tabs, pictures, music, and attachments were included within my ThingLink project. Using this website was a little difficult to understand but turned out to be a hit! I love how you can include websites, videos, pictures, music and much more. Students simply hover over the picture and their task is directly underneath it. Simple, yet effective!

Click here to view my ThingLink Challenge lesson!

Soil Formation

Today we were placed into groups and were given the task to research a topic in earth science that we aren't confident on teaching. The topic I was given was Soil Formation. The task of this lesson is to follow the 5 E's framework: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. Each section of this lesson plan provides a different task to complete. Whether it's through watching videos, reading through power points, looking at articles, or creating different models focusing on soil formation, this lesson framework was incredibly effective and beneficial for me when it came to learning about a new topic I was not confident on. The Soil Formation 5 E's Lesson can be found here! This way of teaching a new topic was incredibly helpful for me because it brought forward so many different tools to learn about new material. After going through each task of the lesson, I am definitely more confident on Soil Formation and with just a little time to review, I could teach a lesson about this topic with no hesitation. Provided below is each section of the lesson plan in great detail. All of the videos, power points, articles, websites and much more are provided below. 

1. Engage

NASA's Earth Minute: Dishing the Dirt

• Think of soil as a sponge. It can absorb a lot of water but will eventually become full. Or it can dry out as the water evaporates.
• Knowing when the soil is getting too dry helps us plan for droughts, prepare for food shortages, and identify places where wildfires can spring up.
• Knowing when the soil is too wet and can’t absorb more rain, helps us better predict floods and landslides.
• Tracking soil moisture from space helps us improve weather forecasts and climate models. And it helps farmers know when to plant, water and harvest their crops.

Dirt! The Movie Trailer

• Dirt might be more alive than we are
• "We are dirt"
• Tells the story of Earth's most valuable and under-appreciated source of fertility

North American Population now: 353,860,000 people make up 4.9% of the world’s population.

Population in 2050: 441,062

Without soil, life on Earth would not exist. Majority of our food is dependent on soil and if that food is not grown, than we do not have food to consume. Healthy soil provides us with fresh fruits, vegetables, and even certain meats which is crucial to our survival. Soil helps grow the fibers that weaves our clothes, gives us a stable place to support our homes, and provides the fossil fuels that keeps our engines running. Soil acts as a purifier for our water and air and helps control erosion and flooding. Without clean soil, we would not survive! It's more than just "dirt." People have such a negative connotation towards dirt, but it is crucial to our survival and a lot of people don't even realize it!

2. Explore

PPT Presentation: Review Slides 12-16 (focus on slide 16)

The power point presentation provided explains in detail about soil formation and each step that goes along with it, including terms like weathering, exposure, particle size, mineral composition, climate, parent material, transported and much more.  The power point slide provided below is extremely important when it comes to discussing soil formation. These slides were very helpful for me and helped me understand the steps of soil formation much more clearly.

3. Explain

After watching Dirt! The Movie trailer, I've become more aware of how important dirt actually is to our survival. This short two minute clip only gives me a brief overview, but it is incredibly informative. We dependent on dirt to purify and heal the systems that sustain us. You have to grow food for humanity and even for nature and dirt is a huge building material that benefits us. "We are dirt." I didn't even realize that deadly conflicts are being broken out because of the lack of fertile soil. So much can happen if soil is not here for us. Some of the comments on the video I found are extremely accurate and make me want to watch the movie myself!

"Really great movie which features prominently neglected truth."

"Finally people are realizing that we need to stop destroying the things that keep us alive...especially dirt!"

"Very thought provoking."

4. Elaborate

Read this article!

Based on the article, the green-roof movement has sky rocketed and has grown food to feed millions of people a year. This movement has a lot of environmental benefits that could be beneficial for us to conserve soil and use it more efficiently, especially to grow crops. Our community could definitely take part in this idea because of the success it has shown. Even though there may be a few obstacles with this idea, I think that this is a movement that we should jump towards.

5. Evaluate 

Here is NYS, our soil does not often match our underlying bedrock.

Going Into Depth About Science Inquiry

The 5 steps of inquiry-based learning

1. Ask questions
2. Probe into various situations
3. Conduct analyses and provide descriptions
4. Communicate findings, verbally or in writing
5. Think about the information and knowledge obtained

Inquiry-based learning is not a technique or practice, but a process that has the potential to increase the intellectual engagement and deep understanding of learners, urging students to:

• Develop their questioning, research and communication skills
• Collaborate outside the classroom
• Solve problems, create solutions, and tackle real-life questions and issues
• Participate in the creation and amelioration of ideas and knowledge

Click this link to read all about the Inquiry Process!

"Learning through inquiry means that the students construct knowledge through the process of asking questions, seeking evidence, formulating explanations based on evidence, and justifying their explanations."

Mock Mystery Bag

• Pass around bag and have 5 seconds to feel what is in the bag
• Felt different objects, heard a squeaky noise and when the bag was shook, the bag made a sound like a maraca 
• Gained an informed guess on the possible answers of what could be in the bag and we shared our findings as a class
• Formulate a statement on what you think is in the bag and create a hypothesis
• Devise a method to obtain information; what would help to evaluate whether your hypothesis is SUPPORTED or NOT supported
• Each test will have two predictions on what to expect; if hypothesis is correct and if hypothesis is wrong
• Restate the hypothesis and predict what would happen
• A hypothesis is NOT just a guess, it is a TENTATIVE EXPLANATION

Collaborative Inquiry Presentation

• Fish is Fish Video
• Children resemble "fish" when they come to class with their misconceptions and through time, they grow and learn who they are as a student
• Common Misconceptions Presentation Topics
• Space Travel
• The sun disappears at night
• Black holes are like vacuums
• The Earth is larger than the sun
• The Earth is round like a pancake
• The moon can only be seen during night time
• Rocks & Minerals
• Rocks must be heavy
• Rocks are the same color on the inside as they are on the outside
• Humans can make rocks and minerals
• Minerals and Rocks are the same
• Minerals are always shiny and metallic
• Life in the Desert
• Deserts are always in a drought, it is dry land with no water or vegetation
• The desert always has a warm/hot climate; no change in weather patterns (Example: Antarctica is the biggest desert)
• Temperatures in the desert do not fall below freezing
• There is no rainfall in a desert

Celebration of Learning

Today was the fourth graders Day of Celebration! The students got the opportunity to celebrate themselves for learning all new material and being such a great class to the science teachers! This day was also an opportunity for the students to celebrate their teachers. Giving feedback back and forth about our lessons and what they liked best was really beneficial for us. Feedback makes us flourish as a teacher to know what works and does not work. When we got to the class, we had the students sign onto their iPads and answer questions on the Sensory Garden Post-Test. Usually, students complain when they see that something is a test. Even though this wasn't being graded, the students still didn't complain and answered the questions to the best of their ability. I never see this happen in a classroom typically. Not one student complained about the questions and just finished the test without any difficulties. After doing this, us teachers prepared a Kahoot! game for the students to play, with questions based on the 4 lessons that were implemented. Of course, the students were ecstatic about playing the game. On our part, we definitely should have planned ahead of time and provided a prize for the winner of the game. The students didn't seem to mind though, they just enjoyed playing a fun game, that also reviewed their prior knowledge. Towards the end of our time in the classroom, all of the teachers stood in the front of the room and told the students how great it was to have them as our class to teach. Besides just a verbal praise, we provided certificates of success for each student with their names printed on them. We called them up one by one and every student was supportive of one another, which was great to see. This fieldwork experience was a great one for me personally. This class very respectful and cooperative which is usually pretty rare to come across. The students really did seem to be engaged with what we were teaching them, especially for me and my group's topic. Not only will I miss this class, I will miss the enthusiasm and support they gave me as a teacher. I wasn't there main teacher, they didn't have to respect or listen to me. But this class was a dream! At times, they were a little too rowdy but overall they were very respectful kids. This day was all about celebrating their success and somehow, the students celebrated us as well, which was a beautiful moment to witness! :)

The Power of the Worm

Today was Group 4's final lesson which they called: The Power of the Worm. They started off their lesson by briefly introducing what the students will be doing today, but James began to review the classroom rules with the 4th graders. He called on one student to read off a rule and then once that student read it out loud, the entire class repeated after him/her. He also briefly mentioned that the students will be playing the teacher vs. class game again and this time there was an even better prize up at hands for them to get at the end of the lesson! Before going into the inquiry lesson, the teachers introduced a "What do you remember?" slide. Each teacher read off a question and had the students answer it and see if they remember anything from their previous lesson. Majority of the students really remembered the facts/definitions that they learned from the previous week, which made them confident to move onto the experiment! Before going into the science experiment, the students had to review the Scientific Method. The entire class felt very confident in this method since they have been introduced to it many times before. The teachers emphasized that this method will be incredibly important for their lesson today because the students will be researching data, making a hypothesis, and formulating a conclusion.

Tara began by telling the students about Gary the Goblin. This story was printed out for the students to read in their individual folders which I thought was a great idea. She read the story out loud with great confidence and explained that the job for the students were to prove that worms are incredibly important and beneficial to gardens. This is when the inquiry experiment of using a webquest was introduced! There were 4 different stations: Food Scraps, Soil, Create Your Own Worm Bin & Worm Meet and Greet. At every station, the students were to bring their packet full of questions and space to record their research. The student's used iPads to visit websites within the webquest in order to support their hypotheses. At the worm bin station, the teachers provided a real life worm bin for the students to look at and research. At the worm meet and greet, the students got the opportunity to touch and play with real life worms! This part of the lesson was incredibly important and kept the students engaged because they were so intrigued about the worms. There were over 200 worms and they were to be placed into the sensory garden that is being constructed! After each student visited all four stations, they were told to return back to their original seats and use the research that they found to conduct a conclusion about why worms are so important to a garden. Since the teachers were running out of time, the class didn't get to share as much as I wish they could have. The stations were a great idea and it seemed like the students really enjoyed this process! After completing all four stations, the students were prompted to write a letter to Gary the Goblin convincing him why worms are so important, while including different facts that they learned and key terms from the direct instruction lesson. Overall, this lesson was extremely creative and it seemed as though all of the students were very intrigued to learn about the worms, since they will be placed in their sensory garden. The teachers were very confident in the material and walked around the room to make sure that each student was participating in the webquest and staying engaged at all times!

Live Organisms and Life Cycles

Today was the last groups turn to teach their direct instruction lesson! The focus of their lesson was on live organisms and life cycles. They started their lesson off by having a student read off the title of the lesson shown on the board. From this, the teachers discussed the classroom rules and had everyone read them out loud. If the class followed these rules throughout the day, they were to receive a prize! To check for the students' understanding, each 4th grader received a thumbs up/thumbs down popsicle stick. They were to hold these up when they understood or didn't understand in order for the lesson to move along. After reviewing the rules of the day, one of the teachers reviewed what the class has previously learned from the other three groups. What I didn't like about this part of the lesson was that the students were placed in groups, but all of the students decided to clump together in the middle of the classroom rather than form groups at their tables. I felt as though this was a distraction for majority of the students. After reviewing, the teachers told the students to open the folders on their desks which included their key terms note sheet. One thing I would change about this is that the key terms were given, when the definitions should have been given instead, in order to save time. Many of the students complained that they had to right down full definitions. 

The lesson began with different types of material: the life cycle, life of a plant, worms, composting, worm bins, and much more. I really liked how all of the teachers seemed very knowledgeable about the material that they were teaching. They used real life, simple examples in order to explain different definitions and processes. One of the teachers even included a little humor into his part of the lesson, which I thought was very engaging! One thing I didn't like about this lesson was the attention grabbing technique. The teachers resulted to clapping five times and having the students clap back. This only worked a handful of times. I felt as though this technique was over used and became ineffective. For majority of the time, the teachers had to talk over the class which should never be the case. Another thing I would have done differently is making sure that ALL students were included and paid attention to. As an observer, I noticed one particular student who was not paying attention. He was secluded from everyone else and was never placed in a group. He was also never called on to share an answer or opinion. This is unacceptable when you're a teacher because you need to give every student the opportunity to learn and grow.

After the lesson was completed, I really enjoyed the group's guided practice activity, which was matching key terms to definitions on the smart  board. This was simple, yet effective! After this activity, the students were given their independent practice, which was to label the stages of the life cycle and plant cycle. I felt as though this was a little difficult for the students because the terms are very intricate. After completing this task, one of the teachers introduced Dr. Smirnova's husband Michael to the class, in order for him to speak about gardening and the knowledge he had to share. The students seemed very intrigued by the facts he was sharing! He focused a lot on compost and worms, which was a hint to group 4's inquiry lesson! Overall, great lesson with great material, there were just definitely a handful of things I would have done differently or added to the lesson in order to make it run more smoothly.

Learning About Ecosystems

The third group taught the 4th grade about Ecosystems! This lesson was incredibly detailed and the class seemed very interested in what the teachers were teaching them. One of the teachers introduced the lesson: "Learning About Ecosystems!" Along with introducing what the students will be learning about, each student was given a happy and sad face emoji stick. This was to check for their understanding! If they understood what was going on and was ready to move forward, they were to hold up their happy face emoji, and if they were confused and needed more time, they were to hold up their sad face emoji. This was a technique I've never seen before so I loved it, and so did the class! A different teacher then introduced a teacher vs. students game. If the students were cooperating and staying quiet, they received a "flower" as their point, but if the students were being loud and not listening to directions, than the teachers received a "flower." If the students win the game, than the group would give each student a prize, which gave the class something to work for, which I loved. Next, a different teacher took the time to review material from the previous lessons that were about water, the water cycle, weather and climate, and light energy. The 2nd group to go didn't do this so I loved that one of the teachers took the time to review over this important information with the class. Along with the new key terms that were introduced in the butterfly word art, the students were given a key terms packet to follow along with the slides. 

All of the teachers during the lesson seemed incredibly confident with the material that they were teaching. The lesson was jam packed with important information which unfortunately resulted in the teachers having to skip over their guided practice activity :( They were running out of time but moved quickly into the independent practice which was to test their knowledge on what they learned from the lesson! I really enjoyed how the teachers walked around the room to monitor the students' volume and make sure that they were independently completing this activity. Overall, this was a great lesson to observe! There was so much material to cover so it's very hard to manage time, but for next time I would definitely love to see the guided practice activity, because that seems like the time where students are fully engaged. Beautiful slides and confidence from all four teachers really brought this entire lesson together!

BDMS Judge

A few days ago I got the opportunity to be a judge at the BDMS Science Fair! Me and a few other girls in the education program were sent to the school to judge the 6th graders science fair projects. What we had to do was circle around the different projects and pick who we wanted to grade. Along with the students oral presentation, the students all made a large poster to go along with their project. While the students stood there and told us about their project, we were to fill out a rubric which graded their materials, pictures, presentation, hypothesis, conclusion, neatness and much more. I judged about 6 students projects and they were all unique in their own ways! For each category on the rubric, the most points that the student's could receive was a 5. Almost every project I judged deserved a 5 in every single category. I was shocked as to how educated these sixth graders were, I could have never done such an amazing project to save my life! One student I got the opportunity to judge was one of my fieldwork students from my sophomore year! I didn't think she would recognize me..but she did! She was so ecstatic to see me and she really wanted me to judge her science fair project so of course I did! She was incredibly confident and her project was amazing and nothing like I've ever seen before. Having this student remember me from just a short amount of time working with her really made me happy because I must have had an impact on her in some way! :)

After circling around the projects about the stroop effect, sound barriers, diet coke vs. pepsi zero, peeps in different liquids and much more, I realized that these 6th graders were amazing little scientists! The judges were told that the students were so nervous..but there was no reason for it! Each student prepared their oral presentations ahead of time and along with that, came their amazingly creative poster boards!! I was so impressed with how neat and organized most of them were. This was a really fun opportunity for me because it made me become aware of how many science experiments there are out there and learn all new facts based off of the students projects. I loved catching up with previous fieldwork students and seeing how they have succeeded in only a year time! The science fair was an amazing day and I can't wait to hear some of these student's names in the news because of how smart and creative they are!!

Light Interactions

Light Interactions 

Observing this inquiry lesson by group two was quite the experience! They decided to base their inquiry lesson on a light interaction experiment! There were four different stations that the students rotated between: reflection, refraction, absorption and transparency. This was a great idea because the teachers provided so many different materials for the students to utilize during these experiments including mirrors, flashlights, jars of water and much more! Before the experiments began, the teachers reviewed the previous lesson in great depth. Even though they provided a little too much material to review, this was a great way to assess the students' knowledge. It took a little too much time, but I thought that the students really enjoyed sharing what they've learned from the last day of instruction. After reviewing the previous lesson, one of the teachers introduced the scientific method and had the students chorally read the 5 steps of the scientific method out loud as a class. After doing this, one of the teachers introduced the light interaction experiment. Each student was handed out a packet of questions to go with each experiment. One thing I would change about this lesson is that I wish that the teachers described each station in detail. I feel as though the students were thrown into a situation and weren't exactly sure of what they had to do. As soon as they got there, the groups figured out what they had to do and how to answer the questions, but I wish that the teachers introduced each station and stated what was expected in each group. Once the students started their experiments, they really seemed the enjoy them! After each group was finished, the teachers gave them the opportunity to reflect on each experiment and tell the class what they learned. This was a great way to get the class together to discuss each station. After sharing, the students got the opportunity to write a letter to their 4th grade teacher about what they learned about light energy and how it relates to the sensory garden, since their teacher wasn't present in class when they completed the inquiry lesson. I thought that this was a great idea!! Overall, this lesson was great and I loved the idea of the light interaction experiments. I love how prepared all of the teachers were and how they supplied all of the great materials for the class to use. This was a great lesson to observe because it gave me so many new ideas for the future. The only thing I would have changed is that the teachers should have reviewed each station in detail before the students went to each station, just to have each group become more clear of what they have to do and how each station works. But the experiments were a great idea and it's such a cool way to introduce an inquiry lesson. 

Observing Day #1!

Observing Day #1!

Today was the first day my group and I got to observe our other classmates teach their unit plans! The next group to go consisted of Kelly, Meghan and Bailey and they were teaching the 4th graders on Light Energy. They started off their lesson by introducing themselves, asking if they know anything about light energy and introducing a great way to keep track of their level of understanding throughout the lesson. They did this through a "traffic light." Each student was given a green, yellow, and red sheet of paper. Green meant that the students understood and can move forward. Yellow meant that the students needed the teachers to slow down. Red meant that the students needed the teachers to stop because they didn't understand. I thought that this was an extremely effective tool to use because I constantly saw the students holding up their papers and they weren't afraid to say whether or not they needed the teachers to stop. After they reviewed about the traffic light strategy, the teachers gave each student a key terms worksheet where they could write down the definitions of each key term from the powerpoint. I enjoy this, but the only thing I would do differently is to provide the students with the definition and have them just write down the key term. The teachers in this group gave them the key term and had the students write down the definition. Many of the students began to complain that the definitions were too long and that they didn't have enough time or room to write them all down. To save time and reduce confusion, the definitions should have been given ahead of time.

After reviewing classroom rules, the traffic light strategy, the key terms worksheet and much more, the teachers got right into instruction! For me, their powerpoint slides were a little too advanced for the students and could have been more engaging and included more pretty fonts and fun pictures to look at. The teachers seemed very knowledgable about the information they were teaching about, but I do wish that every teacher taught equally! I enjoyed how the teachers circled around the room and answered any questions that the students had--that's extremely important! One thing I would change about watching this lesson is how the teachers and students seemed more focused on copying down the key terms definitions rather than actually learning about them. Some of the students seemed confused about certain terms but were rushed to write them down. I wish that maybe the teachers put up more of a discussion to talk about the important terms rather than just give them the time to jot them down and move forward. 

After going through the slides, the teachers introduced their guided practice activity, which included having the students search around the room to find objects that reflect, refract and absorb light. This was kind of a quick activity because they were running out of time so I'm not sure if it was incredibly effective. It was a great idea, I wish they had more time to complete it! After this activity, the students were given their independent practice. Students were given the opportunity to write down what they learned, what they want to learn more about, and one thing they think that they're experts on. One thing I would change about this is that I would have given the students multiple choice questions so I could assess what they do or don't know. Also, one of the teachers told the students that they could work together to complete this task and use their key terms worksheet..which I think is not correct. This is an opportunity for students to independently work and show the teachers what they've learned or need help on. This may have been a nervous mistake, but this time is important so us as teachers can assess the students after fieldwork! But overall, great lesson and it was great to sit back and observe what great ideas my other classmates came up with!

Water Changes Everything--Our Inquiry Lesson

Water Changes Everything.

This inquiry lesson was designed to help students develop a deeper understanding of how water is an essential part of the sustainability of our environment and the world around us. Before this lesson was even created, during our direct instruction lesson, we spoke about droughts and showed a video of Cape Town, South Africa and how they are about to reach "Day Zero" very soon, when their water supply will run out. One of the fourth graders asked, "What can we do to help them? We're in the United States and they're in South Africa. That's their problem, we can't help them." This statement stuck with me and my fieldwork group members. Majority of the students didn't see not having water as an issue and just because we have access to clean, fresh water, they don't realize that we can't live without it and people die without water everything single day. Before we introduced our lesson and this essential statement of "water changes everything," we reviewed our classroom rules and did a Kahoot! game for review. We had back luck that day and the Kahoot didn't load, which upset some of the kids, but to save time, we came up with review questions on the spot and asked a few students what they learned and what they remember from the previous day. The last student we called on reminded us that we spoke about droughts and specifically, Cape Town. We were so excited that she remembered because this was going to be the basis of our Inquiry lesson! Before we explained any further about what we were completing/learning about today, we showed them a video titled "Water changes everything." This video was going to be the basis of our lesson. It shows the importance of water and how it can affect people all around the world if they don't have a proper supply of water, and what we can do to help or how to conserve water.

Check out this amazing video below & see how it can change your perspective on water!

After showing this outstanding video, we asked a few students what they noticed or learned from the video. Many of the students stated that they didn't realize how having no water can affect someones live or that people in less fortunate situations have to walk miles in tough weather conditions every single day just to find water, that isn't even clean. People die from contaminated water every single day and our fourth graders didn't even know that. It was our time to show them that these people matter and there are so many ways that we can help them! This gave us the idea to create a Water Crisis WebQuest. The purpose of this WebQuest was to provide articles and videos focusing on Cape Town, South Africa and what we can do to help conserve water at home or to help others in need whether it's through campaigning or fundraising. The students were split into four groups and accessed the WebQuest on their iPads. Questions went along with each article/video and the students were to work together to discuss the questions and come up with an answer! Because of bad internet connection, a lot of our time was cut off so many of the students didn't get to finish, but I reminded them that they will always have access to this WebQuest! Many of the students seemed very interested when reading about Cape Town and watching the videos. Since we didn't have much time left, we quickly called on each group to share an idea of what they can do to help Cape Town. We planned to have each student write a letter to the people of Cape Town about what they were going to do to help and what they learned from the WebQuest that they didn't know before, but since we ran out of time, only a couple of students had the opportunity to complete this independent practice. At the end of our lesson, we introduced to the students that not only Cape Town suffers because of their water. Newburgh has been suffering a water crisis through water contamination. The entire fourth grade had no idea about this epidemic, so we showed them a short video introducing it. We hope that the students research and ask their parents about what is going on, since we didn't have enough time to explore that topic. Before the students left, we provided each student with their own plush globe as a prize for participating and being a great class! The students loved their prize and seem appreciative of what they learned from us. Overall, I wish we had more time to finish our lesson completely, but overall our ideas were great and the students really seemed to enjoy our Weather and Water lessons!