Week 9

The past few weeks we haven't been blogging, which is very nice as we were busy completing other projects and assignments. This week, I have been finishing up my science through my lens, writing my learning segment for math, and beginning FALL BREAK! I was most proud of my pictures in my science through my lens project, I think they are beautiful and really show scientific phenomena in the nature around us. My biggest struggle was creating questions to fit with each level of blooms but Mallory sent a link out to help us all with these questions so I overcame that obstacle. Over the next week, I hope to be able to observe and meet my CE and her class. I am place in a fifth grade classroom and I am very nervous about teaching 5th graders because I have always wanted younger grades but I will use this as a learning experience and teach them to the best of my ability and who knows, I may end up liking it more than I think. I contributed to the class this week by being involved in our edTPA discussion in science methods on Tuesday. Next week, I will contribute by doing more research about edTPA in order to successfully help myself and my classmates understand it more. For my outside learning and research, I continued looking for science education resources and classroom management strategies. Here are some I found: http://blog.iat.com/2015/08/13/stem-for-elementary-school-students-how-to-instill-a-lifelong-love-of-science/ and    https://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teachers-how-develop-look-rebecca-alber
The first resource is about how to use STEM in your classroom and how to teach your students to love science. The second resource is about how to develop "the look" which is a great classroom management resource, especially in upper grades! For my first tweet of the week, I retweeted this from edutopia. This is a card you can give to your students so they can circle which emotion they feel after you teach your lesson. This is great so you can effectively understand the student's feelings about a lesson.

My next tweet of the week is from mindshift and its an infographic that explains what a teacher does on a day to day basis for her students and for herself.

My third and final tweet for the week is from Amy Fast and it simply says "Leaders need to be led too."  I think this is crucial for a teacher because although we are leaders to our students, we must be led too. 

The current event I found most interesting is about a 54 million year old baby turtle fossil and the scientists found dark pigments that would protect the turtle from the sun's harmful rays!

https://www.livescience.com/60731-fossil-baby-turtle-sunscreen.html

Now, I will refer to the three hyperdocs we have not blogged about yet. Chapter 6's hyperdoc is about how to plan and manage inquiry instruction. In this chapter, we learn that we should use an "engage" lesson just like the 5E model shows us. Engaging our students by creating a hook will allow for your classroom to become a scientific learning environment. Another tip to help with this is that we as teachers should engage our students by using inquiry which is a question that can be solved through investigation. During chapter 6 as well we learn several different classroom management strategies to use in a scientific learning environment. Chapter 7's hyperdoc is about how to question your students effectively. This is a very informative presentation and there are multiple resources on ways to form questions for your students so that way they can learn through scientific inquiry. I enjoyed the article about wait time and how long you should wait before interrupting the students thoughts about a question. The slide about questions and the 5E model is very helpful when trying to write a 5E lesson with scientific inquiry questions embedded into it. Lastly, Chapter 8's hyperdoc is about how to integrate technology successfully in a classroom. At the beginning, there is a video that talks about some new technology that you can use in the classroom such as 3d printing, holograms, virtual reality, the cloud, and biometrics. It goes on to talk about why we should be using technology in our classrooms and the answer is quite simple: it is fun and engaging for the students. I will be taking the resources from all three hyperdocs so that I can successfully have classroom management strategies in a scientific environment, question my students effectively, and how to integrate technology in my classroom. 

Week 6

This week was a slower week since we only had math and science on Thursday this week. This week in math included writing a learning segment with our groups which we will teach next Thursday! I'm with Lindsey and Grace and our learning segment is about how two digit numbers are made up of the tens place and the ones place. I'm excited about teaching because we have some great activities and worksheets for the students to become more acquainted with the tens and ones place. In science today, we were able to discover science writing heuristic on air resistance! We got to create parachutes out of tissue paper and paper clips and we dropped them off the porch and tested each parachute to see how long it took for it to hit the ground after releasing it. Each parachute was different than the others. We recorded the time it took to hit the ground for each one ten times and calculated the average amount of time it took. As a group, we must fill out the slide deck and answer questions about our experiment which takes us through the process of a science writing heuristic. This week my biggest struggle has been deconstructing my clarifying objectives and breaking it down into factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive targets. After reviewing the information we discussed a few weeks ago in class, I was better able to understand how to break my objectives down into these four targets! Over the next week, I will focus on these targets for my unit plan so I can completely and correctly develop the targets for my plan. I contributed to the class this week by helping create our parachutes in class on Thursday and participating in my groups discussion about which parachute we think will hit the ground first or last. To help my colleagues more next week, I will do more research about air resistance so I can effectively help my group form deeper opinions about the parachute learning experience. This week my outside research includes research for the water cycle learning experience! I found a great learning experience that will allow the students to become a water drop and go through the process of the water cycle. This will help my students to understand and relate with the material which in turn will help them to understand. I will use this in my future classroom because it is a great way that your students can relate to the material and I think this will help them to better understand the water cycle. My first tweet of this week is an infographic of how to encourage intrinsic motivation in my classroom! This is important because if I can get my students attention and have them active in the lessons, they will learn much more.

My second tweet for this week says "the energy and attitude of a caring teacher goes a long way" and there is an infographic with a "recipe" for this. This is important because I believe that students learn best from someone they know cares about them! 

My third and final tweet for this week has 25 questions to help guide project based learning planning for teachers! This is an excellent tool for us as we move forward planning project based lessons!

The current event that I've focused on this week is earthquakes and how I can better help my future classroom understand earthquakes. I found this video that animates for kids how earthquakes work and I thought it was very informational and interesting to watch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJpIU1rSOFY This week Jacobi, Savanna, and I completed the hyperdoc for chapter four which is about the 5E model and inquiry based learning! We incorporated infographics, videos, articles, and questions to help the rest of the class understand what the 5E model and what inquiry based learning is! I learned that as a teacher I must allow multiple opportunities for learning in my classroom with inquiry based instruction. This goes along with standard 4 which is teachers facilitate learning in their classroom. A sub standard under standard for is teachers facilitate learning by use of technology and that is what we did by creating a hyperdoc! Overall, this week was a great learning week inside and outside of class. I'm ready for my clinical placement so I can get in the classroom and really experience everything we've been talking about. 

Week 5

This week has been exciting in both science and math methods! Tuesday in math methods, we were detectives investigating word problems! Dr. Nanney came in dressed as a detective with magnifying glasses and explained that we were going to investigate word problems to show us how to hook our students. Tuesday in science methods we got to create the water cycle in a plastic bag. It's amazing how many of the investigations in science methods are done with very low cost, common household items. We created a water cycle bag with a cup of water inside, they are taped on the window and it gives a visual of how the water from the cup gets into the bag through the process of the water cycle. I would definitely use something like this in my future classroom because it is something fun for the students, but they are also engaged in the learning because of this. Thursday in science methods, we discussed EU's and EQ's for our unit plans. The essential understanding is just a statement of what I want my students to know by the end of my unit. For example, "Plants rarely survive without sunlight and water." The word rarely is my qualifier for this EU. The EQ's for our units must provoke thinking in our students minds. Using a yes or no question would not be tapping in to your students knowledge on a topic. An example of an EQ is "what will happen to plants if there is no sunlight or water?" I am very glad that we went over this in class today so I can keep moving forward with my unit planning! Also on Thursday in science methods we learned how to use Cl-Ev-R. This was very cool to see come alive during the solids and holes experiment! Dr. Parker told us what the experiment was and we had to make a "claim" about what we think is gonna happen. Then, we did the experiment and wrote down our data and evidence, which is what the Ev stands for. Lastly, we had to (R)esearch a reason for our evidence and figure out why both items floated even though one had holes in the bottom. I will always keep the Cl-Ev-R model in my resource kit for my future classroom! As you can tell, I learned a lot this week in class, even though at the beginning of the week I didn't feel as confident as I do now about the things we've discussed. Over the next week, I want to continue to work on my unit so that way I can focus on engaging my students in science while also integrating other subjects. I contributed to the class this week by participating in class discussions and asking questions that my classmates may have been wondering too. Next week to help my classmates out I will continue to be encouraging and helpful with things for our classes. Our class discussion on Tuesday about why the sky is blue had me curious, so I found this experiment that you could use in your classroom to show your students. You put a bar of soap in a clear glass of water and let the water get cloudy and white. Then, turn the lights off and shine a white LED light through the glass and the water reflects the blue color! I thought this was a great way to engage my students in a lesson and make the content relative to them.

My first tweet for this week is from NASA and it is a picture of the Caribbean islands before and after Irma. This is something I would show to my students to help them to understand how strong these hurricanes are. 

My second tweet for this week is about student centered coaching and it's a visual that helps us as teachers to remember how to set a goal for your students, assess their prior knowledge on it, teach them according to their needs, and assess them again to check for understanding of the goal. 

 My third tweet of the week is from Alex Corbitt and it's titled "8 characteristics of an innovators mindset" he puts the definition of "innovators mindset" at the top of his visual which says "the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents are developed leading to the creation of better ideas." The visual has 8 characteristics such as being observant, reflective, creators, and several more crucial characteristics.

The current event I focused on this week was the earthquake in Mexico. This is another catastrophic phenomena that my students will need to know about. I found this GREAT video to help introduce and explain earthquakes to the kids! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJpIU1rSOFY 

Chapter three's text facilitation hyperdoc started out with learning about the difference between knowledge and understanding. I now know that if you understand something, you are able to apply it rather than just knowing about what it is. I also learned that constructivism builds on prior knowledge and is a learning theory that says content is more meaningful if they are able to interact with the concepts. Scaffolding your students learning to higher order thinking can be done through scientific inquiry. I also got an up close look at a scientific misconception and the actual scientific concept and got a list of common misconceptions in science which I put in my resource kit! This week was full of learning and growing, and I am ready for the weeks to come so I can learn and grow even more!