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.