Fieldwork Experiences!

                While working with the fifth grade class at Bishop Dunn Memorial School, I have come to find that all students learn in different ways and at different paces. I worked with a fifth grade boy for a few sessions during fieldwork. We would be working together next to another fifth grade boy and his college buddy. I began to notice that my student would catch onto some subjects quicker than the other student did, and vice versa. The fifth grade student and I conducted a buoyancy experiment together during one session. The student created two boats, one made of clay and the other made of aluminum foil. He took and recorded measurements of both boats and predicted how many pennies he thought each boat would hold. Then we put the boats to the test. The student placed his clay boat in the water and began to add pennies. By the time the tenth or eleventh penny was added, the penny began to sink. He then placed the aluminum foil boat into the water. This boat was larger than the clay boat. This boat was able to hold about sixty pennies at which point we ran out of pennies. The student made a prediction that this boat could have probably held double the amount of pennies that was recorded, if there were enough pennies present in the classroom. Being able to witness this student make predictions and adjust them along the way was a very rewarding opportunity. It helped me realize that nothing is perfect in science and there is always room for corrections and alterations.

                During our last few sessions of fieldwork, our methods class was broken into groups in which we had to create an inquiry lesson for the fifth grade class based on chapter twelve of the fifth grade textbook. On group focused on chemical change. They had the students place alka seltzer in water in order to create a reaction. The students were so excited and it was a great hands-on activity.  

                My group created an inquiry lesson on chemical technology and how it plays an important role in our everyday lives. The students were asked if they agree that chemical technology plays an important part in everyday life. They then explore different materials that were created using chemical technology and those that were not. The students had to distinguish between the two categories. I observed the students’ reactions to the objects that they were given. Within their small groups, they discussed which objects they felt were made using chemical technology and which ones were not made using chemical technology. It was very interesting to see how they interacted and played off of each other’s ideas. If one student thought something was made using chemical technology and another student did not, every student in the group would give his or her opinion and they would discuss the characteristics of the object as a group until they came to a conclusion together.

                Every fieldwork experience has given me useful insight into the different aspects of teaching. Having to observe a lesson has given me an outside perspective of how a lesson is run and how students react to different types of lessons. Having to create a lesson has made me realize that not everything always goes as planned in an experiment and as a teacher I should be prepared for anything and everything. Working one-to-one with a student has made me realize that not all students learn at the same pace or in the same way and as a teacher I must be aware of this in order to meet the different needs of all of my future students.

Fieldwork Reflection

After observing and conducting fieldwork at Bishop Dunn Memorial School, I have come to have a greater appreciation for the importance of fieldwork and observation. Being able to observe  a fifth grade science classroom has allowed me to see the teacher and students in this environment and to get a feel for what teaching is like. Likewise, being able to teach an actual lesson to a fifth grade class has definitely given me a different perspective on teaching. I think it is excellent that we have the opportunity to observe a classroom but it is even more excellent that we have an opportunity to teach an actual lesson in front of an entire fifth grade class. This allows college students to receive real hands on experience. It also allows some students to maybe realize that teaching is not for them, or in my case, teaching is absolutely for them. I was scared that I was going to feel uncomfortable teaching in front of the class, but when I actually got up in front of the class, I was very comfortable in my abilities and I knew that teaching is what I am supposed to be doing.  

Earthworms are Awesome!

While doing research on earth worms for my e-folio, I found a youtube vidoe on earthworms that was made for Earth Day last year. It is a very interesting video about earthworms, their environment, and their anatomy. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0iOx6nSwz0

EARTH DAY!

Happy Earth Day! Earth Day is a day for loving the Earth. People have been polluting the earth for centuries and it is our duty, as humans, to take care of the earth. It gives us so much and we do not take care of it enough. Here is a link about how the pollute the earth and ways we can help keep the earth clean. Plant a tree!

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Awesome Ideas for Checking for Understanding!

When creating a powerpoint on prezi.com, on the topic of light energy, I cam across a website that provided a lot of great ideas for checking for understanding. I think it provides many interactive ways to check a student's understanding of a topic! I got the idea for the Checking for Understanding from this document. I think it has many good strategies for checking for understanding!
http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/file/view/strategies.pdf

Moon Phasees

Here is completed documentation of the moon phases for the past six weeks! MOON!

The Beginning of Fieldwork

Science in the News: Save the Trees!

I just recently read an article from http://www.nytimes.com/ that describes how outside, unnatural noise affects the habbits and growth of wild life in the Muri Woods National Park in Marin county, California. You can read the article and my reactions to the article on my e-folio!

Awesome Time-lapse!

The other day I wrote about my moon-phase project and how I am observing the moon, every night, for the next six weeks. I was surfing the web today and I found a really cool time-lapse animation from astrosurf.com of the moon over the period of one month!

Crazy Weather

Mother Nature is definitely playing games with us. This past Friday, 2/18, the weather was absolutely beautiful! It was 64 degrees outside (Fahrenheit, that is) and the majority of the enormous amount of snow, that has been accumulating in gigantic piles around campus, began to melt. I was finally able to see the ground of the tennis courts and the outside tables by Sandella's were finally free of snow and dry enough for people to sit on them and enjoy lunch.There was definitely a feeling of hope, among many students, that spring would be here soon. However, by Sunday the temperature dropped about thirty degrees and there was a sever wind advisory for Sunday and Monday and by Monday morning there was more snow on the ground. This crazy spike and drop in temperature is not as uncommon as it seems. Here is a graph from http://www.weather.com/ that shows the totals of bother temperature and precipitation for the month of February so far. As you can see, we have not come close to the record high, or low, temperature as well as precipitation. There are only six days left in the month, but you never know, we still have some time to break one of the records, (hopefully we don't!)

Chapter 3 Discussions

                I believe that the quotation from the experienced teacher is very true. A teacher can spend a lot of time teaching and explaining a concept but it ultimately comes down to the student. If the student is able to understand what the teacher is saying, then the student is learning. The teacher cannot learn for his students. As we reviewed in class a couple of weeks ago, there are different levels of learning. If the teacher has the student simply memorize the information, the teacher is adhering to a formal- science- curriculum. The student is unable to retain a lot if he simply memorizes facts. However, if the teacher adheres to an informal-science-curriculum, he is forcing the students to think outside the box and to take their thinking to a higher level. If a student is able to relate what he is learning to everyday life, or if he is able to explain and teach concepts to other students, the student has reached the highest level of understanding. As teachers, this is the level we want our students to be at by the time we are finished teaching a topic.

                Going back to the idea of formal-learning-curriculums, many students believe that they can pass a test by repeating back to the teacher the exact definitions that the teacher has given to them. For some teachers this is acceptable however, I believe that it is absolutely unacceptable. When I was in elementary school, there were many times when I believed that if I wrote what I thought the teacher wanted to hear, I would receive a good grade. The majority of the time, if not every time, I did very well on the exams or essay where I wrote what I thought the teacher wanted to hear. I did not actually understand what I was writing most of the time but I continued to write down exactly what the teacher had taught us, almost word for word, just so I would do well in that class. I believe that this is a common practice in schools and it is something that teachers must urge children to avoid. If teachers ensure that their students are able to relate topics to their everyday lives, then they are ensuring that the students will not just write down whatever they believe that teacher wants to hear. Teachers are ensuring that the students learn concepts on the most advanced level possible which is extremely beneficial to the students.

                In the story, “Icicles,” Mr. Wilson refrains from correcting the students when they proceed to weight the icicle incorrectly because Mr. Wilson wants to allow the students to explore and learn from their mistakes. I do not believe that it is a waste of time to allow children to explore different answers and options when working on their own. One of the most effective ways of learning, I believe, is learning from your mistakes. When a student is conducting an experiment and he does not get the answer right away, giving the student the answer does not help the student understand why he got the question wrong. Mr. Wilson was right to allow the children to explore the question and finally come to their own conclusions. If he stopped the students, they would not ever fully understand the question or the topic.

                I live in Long Island, New York. I live very close to the ocean, which is one of my favorite places to go. I also have a vast majority of trees in my town. This allows me to have access to a large variety of natural artifacts that I would be able to bring into my classroom in order to prompt discussions or lessons. I could use sand from the beach and dirt from various places near my home in order to allow my students to compare different types of earth. I could bring in leaves from different trees and have my students classify the leaves according to the type of tree they are from. I can also have my students analyze ocean water compared to tap water, have them observe organisms in salt or pond water, or understand the concept of evaporation and what happens when salt water evaporates.

Moon Phase

For the past two weeks I have been observing the moon every night at 9pm. I will continue to observe the moon for another four weeks. This is what I have observed so far. Moon!
I really enjoy observing the moon and it's phases. Before I began this project, I never really noticed how quickly the moon goes through phases. When I began this project the moon was just a small sliver in the sky. Two weeks later, the moon is full, bright, and very beautiful!!

Chapters 1 and 2: Discovering Science

A person exhibits a scientific way of thinking when she decides to explore further into a topic or idea. For example, if a person sees a tree that appears to be very old, she could explore further and figure out what kind of tree it is, how old it is, and if it is indigenous to the area that where it was found.

During one of my MST classes last year, we leaned about balancing equations. After being taught the task and practicing how to do it, I felt as though I understood the concept of balancing equations. However, after going over our answers in our groups, I realized that I was doing something wrong because my partner, and the other girls in my group, all came to the same conclusion, which was not the same as mine. I finally realized where I was making the mistake, with help from my partner, and I was able to correctly balance equations by the end of class. This incident helped me realize that when a student is taught a new idea or concept, it is important for the student to apply the idea to his everyday life. When a child learns and studies something, he is merely memorizing what is on the page in front of him. However, when the child demons rates the idea in context, he is able to see the idea in a visual context and it is more likely to make sense to him as opposed to just reading about the idea in a textbook.

Technology has greatly aided my learning experience, especially during my high school and college years. Many of my teachers in high school used smart boards durring class. They would lecture and then show us a video on what we had just learned about so that we see how, whatever it was we were talking about, worked. My teachers also provided many online tools to further our understanding of the topics that we were working on.

I believe that when the textbook refers to the reader's "scientific self" it is referring to the part of a person that seeks answers to new things through exploration. I personally feel scientific when I get the opportunity to discover new ideas and work these new ideas into my everyday life. I enjoy discovering new things in the world around me; especially things that have to do with nature.  My high school biology teacher absolutely influenced me to enjoy science more than I did. She was all about science and the exploitation of new things and ideas and she pushed everyone in our class to think outside of the box. After being in her class for a few months, I began to appreciate the world around me and I became very interested in new ideas and how things worked and why they worked.

My idea of a scientist, after reading this chapter, is a person with a longing for exploration. The chapter allowed me to realize that every person has the ability to be a scientist. People should come to realize that a scientist is not just a person in a lab coat and glasses. A scientist has a love and desire for the exploration of new ideas and anyone who has this love is capable of being a scientist. Two scientists whose contributions aided scientific exploration were Marie Curie and Dr. George Washington Carver. Marie Curie discovered the element radium. This discovery allowed for advances in the medical fields at the time and it also allowed for a deeper desire for discovery of new elements and matter. Dr. George Washington Carver was a former slave whose work allowed him to develop synthetic products such as buttermilk, shoe polish, ink, and talcum powder.

There are endless opportunities that are given to me in order to allow me to explore nature. Living by the Hudson River gives me easy access to go and observe the many different living and non living organisms that inhabit the area by the water. Walking around campus, epically during winter, allows me to explore the effects of snow and ice. It also allows me to observe the wildlife that are present on campus, such a birds and the skunks that sometimes wonder the campus; though I try not to get too close to the skunks.