Field Day 3 Reduce, Reuse, Recylce!

Today’s science lesson was on recycling! To begin the lesson, my CT activated the student’s prior knowledge by discussing sorting which they talked about yesterday. They discussed that you can sort by color, shape, size, feel and taste. This lead to a discussion about how it is necessary to be able to sort so in order to recycle. My CT had a garbage can, a recycling bin and a recycling container for paper only for the students to see. She explained what goes in each of the different containers and why. She brought to their attention the symbol with three arrows that represents something that can be recycled. My CT told the students that they should always look for this symbol before they throw empty containers or bottles away in the garbage. She passed different bottles around and the students got to find the symbol on them so that they would know what to look for at home. My CT related this lesson to their daily lives by reminding them to always look for the symbol before throwing a container away at home. She had containers that the students would recognize such as milk cartons and apple juice containers. A few days ago they watched a Magic School Bus episode about recycling. The students saw how plastic can be melted down to make plastic capsules and how paper can be recycled so that less trees have to be cut down. My CT explained to students that they should recycle newspaper in the recycling bin, and paper in the recycle box for paper only. She pointed out that although these are separate bins, they both have the recycle symbol on it. She also gave the example of how the students often do activities in class which reuses the newspaper. Again, she was relating recycling to their daily lives so that the students could see the importance of it and how it is relevant to them. She concluded the lesson by reading the book Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
The students seemed to drift off a bit during this lesson, and I think this is because there were no hands on activity for them to do. They did seem to enjoy the book, and they were interested when the containers were being passed around, but I feel like they were more interested in last week’s science lesson when they were able to participate more actively. I think this lesson was done in a way that really showed the students how reduce, reuse, recycle can be applied to their lives which is really good because I think this sort of thing gets them interested in science!

Field Day 2

Today in placement the students had a science lesson on sorting. To begin the lesson, my CT talked about how in the last science lesson the students watched an episode of the Magic School Bus about recycling. They discussed how in order to recycle; one must be able to sort. They then practiced this on a sand table! There were magnetic letters in the sand table, and the students had to try and figure out how to get the letters out of the sand. The CT had a small plastic shovel and tried to sort the letters using the shovel. They discussed how you could use a shovel to try and get the letters out, but that the shovel really wasn’t the best tool to use. The students and my CT talked about how a colander or magnets might be more useful. There was a discussion about how using either a colander or a magnet would be a more productive way of sorting the letters out of the sand. My CT showed the students out these tools worked. She explained to the kindergarteners that the sand would not stick to the magnets, but that the letters would. The students then had a chance to come up and help sort the letters themselves! Each of the students had a chance to get some hands on time experiementing with the tools. After each student had a chance, my CT counted the number of letters that they as a class had sorted out of the sand. Twenty-four letters had been sorted, which meant two more were still somewhere burried in the sand. The students crowded around the table and excitedly watched as my CT used a magnet to find the last two letters.
This seemed to be a really fun lesson for the kindergarteners to watch and participate in. They were interested in learning about sorting, and they were excited about the hands on part where they each had the opportunity to use the tools. The next lesson they do is going to be about sorting as well. They will be practing sorting magnetic objects verses non-magnetic objects. I think the students will be equally enthusiastic about this next lesson as they were about today’s lesson. When I was talking to my CT today, she said that because there isn’t too much time for science everyday, she always tries to have some sort of hands-on activity in order to get the students interested and paying attention.

A Private Universe

I was not too surprised about the video “A Private Universe.” I had heard about this video before in SME 301, but it was still a little surprising to hear Harvard graduates having such large misconceptions about something that is taught in grade school. I think one of the biggest reasons for misconceptions such as why there are phases of the moon and about weather is because teachers assume that students already know certain things coming into a class. An astronomy professor at Harvard probably never felt compelled to teach the phases of the moon because it was assummed that the students would have learned about the phases way before being admitted to such a prestigious school. I know that before taking SME 301, I would have given the same sort of answer! As a future teacher, this video showed me how difficult it can be to correct a student’s misconception. Students have ideas in their head, and they are hard to change because the students think of these ideas as facts. Because of this, I think it would be important to give students a pre-test before starting a new unit in order to see what they do and do not know. This way, you could address the misconception from the beginning, and start focusing on the unit and what is now known to be correct.

First Field Experience

I will be in my field placement for 5 hours on Tuesdays, where I will be able to see science and social studies being taught in the after noon. I am placed in a kindergarten classroom, and the way that my CT and the other Kindergarten teacher teach science and social studies is by splitting up who teaches each subject in the afternoon. Therefore, everyother week I will be watching either a full science, or a full social studies lesson. On the weeks were I do not see the science lesson, there might be a science station at centers, or my CT might do a small science lesson at the end of the day if they didn’t get to it earlier. This past week, I saw the social studies lesson, but I had some time to talk to my CT about the science. She said that the unit they are currently working on is about recycling. The students are learning about how to/the importance of “reduce, reuse, recycle.” They will also be practicing separating different items into categories. For example, they will need to separate plastics from metals. To do this, my CT will have items such as plastic and metal hairpins mixed together, and the students will have to separate them. They will talk about different ways of doing this, such as using a magnet to grab the metal with. The students did not do this activity this week, but my CT said that the will be doing this activity, or one similair, in the near future. The students watched an episode of the magic school bus in class this week that had to do with recycling. My CT was teaching the other kindgarten class science this week, and I went with the class I am placed with to watch the social studies.