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!

First Day Teaching 4th Grade!

First Day Teaching 4th Grade!

The day finally came! After only having one week to prepare our unit plan, my fieldwork group and I successfully taught our direct instruction lesson on weather & water! It was a stressful and time consuming week...but we created an awesome and engaging lesson! We started off class by introducing ourselves and speaking to the students about what they will be learning in the next 2 days from our group. Before we started teaching any material, we went over the classroom rules which we created together. We created a poster and the rules stated, "In fourth grade we...Listen to instructions, Encourage one another, Ask questions, Respect yourself/others, and Never give up." These rules spell out the word LEARN!! We felt that it was incredibly important to introduce the class to these rules in order to succeed. After repeating those rules out loud as a class, I introduced a key terms notepad. This notepad was fill-in-the-blank and had all of the important key terms of the lesson defined on it. The students were to follow along with the powerpoint and fill out the key terms. Next, we moved onto the "Tree of Knowledge poster board." This was a large poster board of a tree where students will post yellow and blue post-it notes stating one thing they know about weather and water and one thing they want to know. Some students shared that they know about the water cycle, precipitation and other students shared that they want to learn where water comes from and how clouds are formed.

This was a great introduction to our word cloud, which we showed on the powerpoint that included different key terms and words that are going to be explored throughout the lesson like "rain, precipitation, condensation, weather," and much more. As soon as we finished reviewing and assessing the students prior knowledge, we got right into the material! We spoke about water, why plants need water to live, the water cycle, droughts, air and atmosphere, layers of the atmosphere, air masses, climate vs. weather, plants in the four seasons, and watering gardens. We had a jam packed day of material to teach so we didn't have much time for all of the activities we had planned because we wanted to make sure that the students became aware of everything we wanted to teach them! Throughout the powerpoint we provided checks for understanding which assessed the class's knowledge throughout our lesson. After doing a few of those, finishing our powerpoint, and watching a few videos, we passed out a weather and water web organizer, which showed a cloud with water droplets coming down from it. This was our guided practice activity! We had the class turn and talk to the students at their table to discuss different key terms/facts they learned today during our lesson. As they were doing this, I replicated the web organizer on the white board so I can write down the student's answers as they stated them out loud to the class. Even though we didn't have much time to do this activity, the students loved it and came up with great key terms and facts!

After this activity, we gave the students an exit ticket consisting of 2 short answer and 5 multiple choice questions, which created our independent practice! Some of the students were bummed out that they had to answer questions, but I reminded them that they were not getting graded on these questions, it was for us teachers to see what they learned and how we can improve our teaching in the future! After students completed the exit ticket, we thanked them for participating and told them to get excited for our Inquiry lesson on Thursday!!

Overall, our lesson went fantastic! Of course everyone wishes to have more time with the students in order to perfect every part of the lesson. Considering the little time we had to prepare and only an hour to teach all of that material, I thought that my fieldwork group and I did very well! We created an informational lesson, yet it was engaging. The students seemed to learn a lot and raised their hand to speak at any chance they could get! We're so excited to teach our final lesson to the fourth grade, which will be a very eye-opening one!

Getting to Know Our Students!

Getting to Know Our Students

Today was our first day of fieldwork and we spent our day getting to know our fourth grade fieldwork students! Me and my fieldwork group worked long and hard to figure out what activity we should do with the students in order to get to know them, have them be engaged, and pre-assess their knowledge on weather and water. Before we even got to the classroom, my entire class put together a pre-assessment test for the class to take. This included questions about gardening, weather and water, light, soil, and much more. Even though this was a "test," it was not graded. It was for us to see what the students know or don't know. Students usually complain when they have to answer questions or take a test but this class was great! They were so cooperative and answered every question to the best of their ability. If they didn't know an answer, we told them that it was okay for them to write "I don't know." This was our time to figure out what exactly we need to focus on in our lessons in order to have the class succeed. The students took the pre-assessment on a Google Forums and completed it on their class iPads so technology worked to their benefit! They definitely stayed more engaged on the iPad and were interested in the questions they had to answer. Even though this took up majority of the class time, we still had a little time left to get to know our students! The students were broken up into four groups and rotated their way to each fieldwork group to get to us know us, and also complete a fun activity/game! 

My group and I planned to have two activities: a tree of knowledge poster and play the game of Jenga with getting to know you/weather and water questions on the pieces. We didn't have time to complete our tree of knowledge poster, so we will be planning to use that during our lesson, so stay tuned for an explanation on what that poster is about! :) Our second activity planned was Jenga. Jenga is a game where wooden blocks are stacked up extremely high and each person has to pull out their block but try to stay away from having the whole tower fall down. My fieldwork group and I wrote down questions on the Jenga pieces that were "getting to know you" questions like, "What is your proudest moment?, Do you have any pets?, What's your favorite subject?" etc. And for the pieces we left blank, we had the students answer a question about weather and water that we provided for them like, "What is your favorite season and why?, Can you name one stage of the water cycle?, What is Evaporation?" etc. The students really enjoyed answering personal/pre-assessment questions. Even though some of the questions they didn't know the answer to, they really enjoyed playing the game of Jenga. We all introduced ourselves and got to know each other a little bit before each round but overall, this was a great way to get to know our fieldwork students! We hope that our students enjoyed our activity the most and that it was beneficial to themselves as well to us!