First Full Week

I have learned a lot this week both in Science and Math methods. This week I learned what inquiry and phenomena are. To be honest, I have never really heard them used before or have seen them used in the classroom. Since I have never heard of them or seen them practiced, I did struggle with understanding phenomena. However, once the light bulb went off, I was able to make the connection between inquiry and phenomena and I was proud that I could make that connection. I contributed to class discussion this week, but not as much as usual since this was a new subject for me. Now that I am more familiar with it, I can participate in class discussion even more next week. Over this next week I want to be on the look out for phenomena because I think it is so interesting that you can use this skill just by walking around outside. Science is all around us and I want to be more open to seeing it because I think it will really help me as a future teacher to be educated and have a lot of practice with phenomena.

It is so important that we are having our students think and ask questions instead of just lecturing them and teaching directly at them. When students have to question things, they are able to better understand what they are learning and are practicing life skills by doing so as well.  This is NCPTS four, “Teachers facilitate learning for their students” under “teachers help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.” By using phenomena, students are both critically thinking and problem solving. We as future teachers need to have a classroom that is revolved around inquiry so our students can learn as much as they possibly can and be set up for the most success as possible. I will also use the 5E model in my future classroom. Engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate and five awesome ways for students to learn, get involved and stay engaged in what they are learning.

This week I started to look up different resources and websites that I can use in my future classroom that have to do with science. I am collecting resources for my PDP so I started this week and found a science game called Starchitect. It is an online educational game that can be used to explore astronomy and planets. Students are able to build stars and planets and then watch as they evolve into scaled real time. You can travel in time, pick your location, design clouds and design the atmosphere. It is a fun and educational game where students can learn about the solar system, planets, and atmosphere.

A science event that I have been hearing about and reading about is the hurricane in Texas. Peoples homes, cars and even some lives are being taken and destroyed from the flooding. On a smaller scale, we can compare the flooding in Texas to the ecosystems we are working on in class. Over the next three weeks the organisms in our ecosystems will not survive if they do not have the proper minerals and the correct environment, just like people cannot survive unless they have the proper materials and care in their lives. 

This tweet by Tom Loud was awesome and could not have been said any better. Some people are not willing to see the hard work, dedication, sacrifice and failure that goes into success. This goes along with science experiments, we need to teach kids that it is okay to mess up and fail before they get to the end results. If we teach them at a young age what hard work looks like and teach them good habits, they will be more successful later on in life.

This is another great tweet that was tweeted by teacher goals. "Content is good. Content and life skills is better." These are nine great points that every teacher should use to help their students become successful in life. My favorite is number 2, they should learn how to respectfully speak their minds. We need to encourage them to talk and voice their opinions and solve problems out loud, but in a respectful manor.

Lastly, this tweet is straight forward but very important. We as future teachers will be the reason a child comes to school. We need to love our students and treat them all equally. We need to push our students to be the best and encourage their growth.

First Day Of Senior Year!!!

 I cannot believe I have entered my senior year of college today. It seems like these past three years have flown by. I am excited to be taking both Science and Math methods this semester and think I will learn a lot from both of these classes.

            There was nothing I was really proud of or satisfied with this week since we only had one class and we did a science experiment the whole class. Math and Science have never been my strong subjects, so today in class when we were talking about the water and foil experiment and different terms I was a little lost. I will need to look information up outside of class when I do not understand because this is a methods class so we learn how to teach and not so much about the content. I need to know the information before I learn how to teach it, so it is important to look up the concepts that I do not fully understand.

            I think it was really cool how we started right off with a hands-on science experiment. It definitely made the class more interesting and fun. It kept us all engaged and helped me to realize if I was having fun building boats and seeing how many pennies each could hold, I know my elementary kids would enjoy this and it would keep them engaged in the lesson.

            As I mentioned before, it was the first day of class so I didn’t really contribute anything to the class this week besides in my science experiment group I helped to come up with ideas of how to build our boats. I also did not complete any outside research this week because it was the first day of class today.

            A specific current event that related to science that I learned about this week was the solar eclipse. I had no idea what a solar eclipse was before everyone started talking about it. If I was teaching in a classroom currently I could tie this into the classroom by showing my students videos, creating visuals or doing experiments to help my students get a better understanding of how, why, and when a solar eclipse occurs.

            Today in class I made the connection of NCTCS standard 3, “Teachers know the content they teach” under “teachers make instruction relevant to students”. Teachers need to know their students and know when they need to do hands-on activities to keep their students engaged and interested. I think science is a subject students can definitely get lost with if the teacher is not making instructions that will help the students to learn. I believe students will better understand concepts if they can do them themselves.

This tweet from Dr. Justin Tarte says "You weren't hired to maintain the status quo. You were hired to make a difference." I think this is very powerful especially for teachers today. We cannot just get by and think we are there just  to make money. We are there to change kids lives and invest in their lives so they are better prepared for the world that they will be heading into.

This next tweet says "success seems to be connected to action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit." I think this tweet can be perfectly related to science because scientists make mistakes all the time but they don't give up. You learn lessons from trying and trying again. You will not have success if you give up after the first try, so we need to embed that in our students heads and show them that it is okay to make mistakes but not okay to give up when mistakes are made.

Lastly, this tweet goes along with the tweet from above. It says "It's okay to not know, but its not okay to not try." If a student doesn't know something thats okay, that is what teachers are there for. It becomes an issue if they are using that as an excuse for not trying. Instead of saying they don't know they could say "can you help me" "may I ask a friend for help" or "may I have more time to think" We need to encourage our students to look at other options when they "don't know" something.