Science Work Day

Yesterday was a work day in Science Methods class and I was very pleased to have this work day because I feel it was much needed during this busy time of year. I know that many of my classmates were also happy to have a work day so they could talk with other students working on their final projects in order to get some ideas. It was nice to also talk to others about where they located some of the materials needed for the final project, such as the NSES standards. I like having workdays and I know that they will allow us to develop even better lessons than we had intended because we have been allowed a great amount of time to develop them so they will be at their best! Work days are also great because they are a convient time for ALL of the group memebers to meet so they can all be incorporated in developing the lesson plan.

Elk Point Science Fair

Taking part in the Science Fair held at Elk Point was a great experience that I enjoyed. I was glad that I had the opportunity to take part in such a supporting event. I always like having the opportunity to have more time in a classroom and this experience not only allowed me to evaluate the students work, but also see how much work and time these projects had been for the students. It was neat to see how much passion some had for the experiments and discoveries they had found! Some of the students amazed me with their knowledge and some of experiments they had come up with! I was an amazing experience and would encourage more college professors to give their students the opportunity to judge or simply view similar events. I was a little unsure about the Science Fair when I was first informed of it but now that I have went through with the experience I am very glad that I did! It was a great experience!

Thanksgiving

Snowflake Bentley

The book that we have included in our lesson plan is called Snowflake Bentley. This book was incorporated into our lesson plan because it works perfectly with analyzing snowlflakes. It was interesting to find a book that correlated so nicely with the lesson. This book will be a great contribution to our lesson because it will show how students will be able to learn about the development of snowflakes. I recommend this book to others that are teaching about snowflakes. We thought it would be good to discuss winter weather with winter approaching so students know how to dress properly when out in the cold winter weather. The analyzing of snowflakes will also get them excited for more snow to fall so they will be able to show others there new trick about snowflakes.

Lesson Plan II

I am looking forward to the upcoming lesson plan that we will be presenting next week because I think that we have an interesting topic. When doing these lesson plans to our classmates, I love to see the feedback so I can tell if I am on the right track for developing a strong lesson plan that will be interactive and also something that students will learn from. I feel it is very helpful to have the evaluation sheets because it really lets you know what you can improve on. I don't feel offended if someone comments on something that I need to do differently; that is actually what I WANT to see so that I can quickly make improvements before I go into the teaching world! I hope that the rest of the class enjoys our lesson plan and provides us with good feedback so we can make any changes that need to be made!

Workday hooray!

With the extremely busy two weeks that we have had on our hands, it was extremely great to have a workday on Thursday! I was soo greatful of the understanding of Dr. E, I also felt the workday was much needed because there were a lot of us that had questions concerning the upcoming lesson plan. It was very nice to be able to get these questions resolved and get everybody on the same page. I feel that days like this are much needed at times and I was glad that Dr. E was understanding enough to allow us to have one. I am now more confident with the lesson plan that we are going to be presenting next Thursday.

5 E's

Learning about the concept of Constructivism and the 5 E's was very interesting and helpful because it broke down the different steps students go through when changing misconceptions and relating them to actual knowledge. The 5 E's: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate, all play a critical role in the quality of the students learning. It is imperative that students engage themselves in the material they are learning about and make connections between the past and present. It is also important that they explore and get directively involved and also explain what they recognized during this process. Explaining and elaborating on these ideas is also important when expanding on the concepts and strengthing those connections they are making. The final E, evaluation, is important for the teacher in order to determine if the student in comprehending and making process and learning. I will definitely take the 5 E into effect when I engage my students in learning new materials in my classroom.

Blasting off our bottlerockets!

Out of all of the lesson plans that we participated in the last couple of days, I found the Bottlerocket one to be my favorite. It was difficult to grasp the comlete process of putting the bottlerockets together because the lesson plan and activity were spilt, but I still found it to be very interesting. Although it was a little on the dangerous side if students were not careful, I found the correlating safety video to be very helpful and covered all of the materials in a very clear and understandable manner. We were lucky to have such nice weather that would allow us to participate in shooting off our rockets today. There were many fun explosions and everyone got involved and had a lot of fun! I will definitely remember this activity and maybe explore it with my future students!

Heat and Light sources

I was looking forward to presenting our lesson plan to the class! I liked how we had incorporated the two different sources and showed home some can be both a light and heat source. I also liked how we had a great attitude and although it was hard to incorporate a safe hands-on activity for first graders to do, i still feel we pulled it off. The safety video correlated well with our lesson and allowed students to participate in an activity outside of the classroom! I liked how they could relate this to an out of class experience. It worked well that we could present our lesson plan the day before Halloween! I had fun presenting this lesson plan but wish we would not have had to be so rushed in order to fully get through the material.

Science lesson plans

I have had a lot of fun taking part in the numerous lesson plans put on by my fellow classmates. There are a number of important aspects and ideas that I will take from these and incorporate into my classroom. They all addressed the safety issues very clearly and provided very useful and appropriate videos. I especially liked the homemade video by Brittanys group. Very clever and got the points accross very clearly. I also enjoyed making the different mixtures, especially the goop that would allow you to walk on water! That was amazing! I have had so much fun with these lesson plans and think it is a great idea to allow students to present the different lessons they have come up with because it gives us all better ideas to address in our future classrooms!

Online Quizes

I like that we can take the quizzes online and that we have a whole day to do them. I also think it is a great idea to allow us to enter the quiz two differnt times. I feel that the quiz covers the most imperative information and like the length of the quiz. I feel that they are beneficial to learning the material but think that some of the questions should be more straight forward on what they are looking for. I feel there are a lot going on in each question, most of the questions contain numerous mini questions in them and it is easy to not cover all of the aspects of the questions without writing a book for an answer! I think the questions should be simplified more and it would be a more well rounded quiz that will be easier to answer and also check because they will be clearer to both the student taking the quiz and the grader as well.

Lesson Plans

I have really enjoyed participating and seeing all of the different lesson plans that have been presented by my classmates. I feel that they are all very good lesson plans that can be used in future classrooms. I like the variety of grade levels and different areas of science that are covered. It is also interesting to see how safety was incorporated into each lesson plan. Safety is important and I like how they are fun hands on lesson plans but they are also stressing the importance of safety when using the materials. Safety First! :)

Lesson Plan

Our lesson plan is going to be very fun! I am getting excited to find fun activities and videos that can be incorporated into the plan. I think that students would really like our lesson plan and I feel that it will not only be a fun, hands-on adventure for the students, but it will also be a learning experience they will be able to refer to when they are out of the classroom and into the real world. Discussing shadows and the sun is something that every child will be able to refer to and have probably experienced some time in their lives so it will be a great time to refer to those times. I hope our lesson plan will be successful and that the students will enjoy and learn from our teaching!

Science Fair

I also wanted to blog about the Science fair that is coming up in the near future. I will have to admit when I first heard about this I was not too excited, I was more on the scared side because I really wasn't sure if I should be qualified to be a JUDGE! As the time is coming near I am actually looking forward to spending time, out of the classroom, with my classmates. I am also looking forward to getting bright new t shirts that will allow us to look sharp and as a judging team! Go USD science judges! :) Although I am still a little nervous I think it will be a great experience and I am looking forward to it!

Safety Websites

I found todays web surfing in class to be a very exciting hands on project that my partner Erika and I enjoyed. We found some of the websites to have a lot of suitable information for kids to learn from, along with fun activities to engage in. The scavenger hunt was also a cute exercise that did a great job with providing kids with information and safety in a variety of important issues and topics that would pertain to kids of all ages. I liked how the websites had a lot of colorful animations and attention grabbing activities for kids! :) I found myself wanting to engage in many of the games and activities myself! With the technology today it is amazing how advanced and amazing they can make these websites!

Midterm Project

I am excited to start working with Erika and developing a great lesson plan for our midterm project. I also think it is a good idea to use the webcam in order to show bits of the lesson plan. I feel that it is also very important that we stress how students MUST incorporate the use of safety when participating in the lesson plan. Safety is a very important element that must not be overlooked and I feel students take it lightly. Making sure students use safety materails and that they fully understand the correct uses of each instrument is also very important. I think it will be interesting to finally put together an interactive lesson plan that we will have the opportunity to demonstrate and interact in ourselves.

Mystery Box

The Mystery Box lab was definitely a "mystery" activity that is for sure. I found the directions of this lab to be a little unclear because a lot of classmates, along with myself, had a misunderstanding on what exactly was being asked for us to find in the mystery boxes. I assumed that we were simply trying to find out what objects were inside of the boxes, instead the idea was to find out what type of barriers were inside the boxes and where and how they were positioned. This was frusterating because with us misunderstanding the directions, we completely dismissed the whole idea of the lab. Although we caught on quickly, I still felt that the whole lab was a waste of time because I really didn't get much out of this. This taught me something about the importance of explaining what you want students to do and make sure they are all on the same page on what is being asked otherwise your activity is worthless.

No Class Module

Although it was nice not to have to attend class on Tuesday, I felt that I would have rather participated in an in class activity that I could have engaged in as apose to the reading quide questions. I found the questions to be boring and the ordinary type of assignment that most teachers assign; one thing I like about science is that you have soo many more options for experiments and activities! Science has always been considered such a hand on class that it is difficult to have to sit down on a computer and type about it soo much. Although I know assignments like that are necessary for learning materials also, I would rather engage in more hands on activities. I will keep this in mind when I become a future teacher, I feel like science is the subject that can break of the norm of writing so much and completing pencil/paper, question/answer assigments that most of the other classes portray. Science should be fun and engaging and allow students to dig in a variety of labs and hands-on activities.

The Amazing Food Detective

I found the Amazing Food Detective website to be a very educational site that I believe children will enjoy. I loved how the site was very interactive and allowed the students to feel as if they were actual detectives. They were numerous activities that they students could engage in and the educational activities were fun and allowed students to understand and learn about choosing healthy food and maintaining a good diet. They will learn how to change their eating habits and how it will effect their bodies! This website will allow students to have a better idea about their nutrition and realize its importance, while also allowing them to have fun while learning! Great website that I will definitely recommend to others!

A Star's Story

The web seminar, A Star's Story was a very interesting seminar that I would suggest to others. Although it was my first web experience, it was a good one! I was not only intrigued by the whole format, I also liked how there was a chat room available for the users so we could chat with others on the seminar. It was neat to be able to be learning and chatting with people all across the world, even in Australia! I liked how we were also able to interact and ask questions at any time of the seminar. I also found it very important that the seminar leaders presented the material in a very comfortable manner that was easy to follow. Along with great presentation, I also found it very nice that there were so many resources that were mentioned, used, and presented to us. I was unaware of resources of this kind being available and was excited to learn of them for future reference!
I am glad that I had the opportunity to take part in the web seminar and liked how I was able to view it right in the comfort of my home. It was a very well developed seminar that provided a vast amount of information. The different graphs and photos were also helpful when learning the material and made it easier to understand. I feel the seminar was worth viewing and I now am happy to say I have a better understanding of stars! :)

ACID TEST

I found the experiment that we engaged in on Tuesday September 23 to be an interesting one. I was shocked to see how much the acid levels differed among the different fruits. I was particularily thrown off by the low acid results from the grape fruit juices. Their acid tests were almost at zero and were incredibily lower than the lime. The lime juice acid test shot up to approximately a half! This was exciting to see and it was also fun to notice how the vinegar also shot up to almost 3/4! I feel this would be a good experiment for students. I was a great team project that everyone could take part in and learn from. This experiement would go great with a nutrition lesson plan because they would be able to learn about how acid affects you body and how much of it you should have in your diet. This was a great experiment they can easily be expanded in order to correlate with a variety of lesson plans!

Nutritional Facts

I found yesterdays class period to be very, very interesting! I was so shocked to see how the calories added up and how important it was to make sure that the right amount of fats, carbs, and proteins we incorporated into my diet. It was also very hard to calculate the total amount of calories because they all seemed to add up so quickly! I was shocked to learn how some foods that I thought were low cal foods turned out to be high in calories. This activity definitely made me more aware of my eating habits. I would also like to incorporate this activity into my future classroom and also think it would be a good time to get the parents involved so they too can realize the importance good nutrition not only for their children, but also for themselves!

Science Safety Game

I found the Science Safety Game to be a very useful piece of equipment to be present in the classroom and readily available for use by the students. This game is a very clever way to incorporate the importance of safety when completing tasks in the Science classroom. It's a fun way to educate students, you cannot get much better than that! I feel students overlook the importance of safety and how easily some of the equipment they are provided has a unique and important use. I also found it very helpful in explaining the different insturments in the common science classroom and their overall importance and connection to their overall learning experience.

Lab #1 Copters

I chose to blog about the copter activity that we took part in on the first day of class because I thought that this was a really interesting idea that allowed all of the students to engage in. I like the idea of having different roles that each student can take in order to get everyone involved. My role in the lab was to be the equipment manager, which kept me busy and I liked the idea of always making sure that my group had the equipment they needed in order to complete the project. I am looking forward to participating in more labs in the near future! :)

temperature activity

I found the temperature activity to be interesting, but also frusterating when the technology we were incorporating into the project failed to provide with results and information that we needed. This caused us to fall behind in the activity and as a result were forced to rush through the activity. I do think this would be a good activity for students to partipate in, but would make sure that prior to the activity the equipment that was going to be included would be ready for use and easy for the students to understand and maneuver.