Field Day 7

Today in placement instead of my CT doing a lesson, my other classmates and I who are apart of the same activity sequence did our science talk with the class that we will be teaching our lessons to in March. Each of our lessons incorporates plants, so we asked t he students what they knew about plants. We told them that there were no right or wrong answers, and that we just wanted to discuss what they knew about plants. The students were fairly talkative in the discussion, and had some good ideas. After the discussion, we passed out plain paper and the students drew a picture of what they thought the life cycle of a plant was.
During the discussion we heard many words such as “roots, dirt, leaves, flowers, trees, water and sun.” Some of the students knew that a plant grows from a seed. So the students had some ideas that were very close to what we will be teaching. However, there were also many misconceptions such as that trees are not plants, and that you give apple trees apple juice to grow. Overall, I thought it was a good discussion that will help guide us when writing our full lesson plans and when teaching our lessons to the class. There were a variety of pictures drawn, ranging from single pictures of flowers, to pictures labeled with number “1,” “2,” “3” with first a picture of a seed, and then a picture of a plant progressively growing.
My CT did not teach a science lesson today because we did this instead, and I did not get a chance to discuss with her what else they are doing for science this week. There is no class the Tuesday after Spring break at my placement. I might go into the classroom one day over Spring break because I will be in the area, but if not the next time I am in my placement is when I teach my lesson!

Field Day 6

Last Tuesday was the 100^th day of school in my field placement! The students did not have specific science lesson today, but the activities they did incorporated science, and showed me how as a teacher you can incorporate fun learning activities into celebrations! The students each brought in 100 items of whatever they wanted (for example 100 M&Ms, 100 Cheerios etc.) They sat in a circle and dumped their 100 things into a large bucket. Then, the students went to their tables and my CT and I gave each student a scoop of the now mixed up assortment of 100 items and put it on mat that they had each made with 10 boxes on it. The students had to sort their items so all of the cereal was in one pile, all the M&Ms were in one pile etc. Students who finished quickly went on to sort their already classified piles by color, shape, size, etc. The students really enjoyed doing this activity, and even though it was not a direct science lesson, it still helped to enhance their skills on sorting and classification, which can be applied to science lessons such as recycling. Having students work on these skills will be beneficial to other aspects of science, and will help them be able to thoroughly analyze, sort, classify and make sense of observations or data that they may come across in future science lessons. I think today’s activities can be applied to benchmarks such as: SCI I.1.E.5 Develop Strategies and skills for information gathering and problem solving. SCI I.1.E.6 Construct charts and graphs and prepare summaries of observations. If there was more time, students could have possibly made graphs of how many items of a certain color they had, or a certain shape for example. Placement this week taught me that there are other things that a teacher can do to include science, or math into a lesson while still celebrating special days with students.

Field Day 5

I did not see any science in placement last week because the Gingerbread Man ran away! The majority of the day was centered around the story the Gingerbread Man, and when they would have had normally been doing science, the students were looking thoughout the building for the Gingerbread Man. I was trying to think of some sort of science activity that could go along with this if I ever did a Gingerbread Man unit in my future classroom. I can’t really think of much, but you could do something where you make predictions of where the Gingerbread Man might have run away to, and collected evidence on it etc. Since I did not see much science today, I thought I’d use this space to talk about some of my CT’s classroom management rules: I noticed a behavior chart in the corner of the room. The chart has everybody’s name on it under columns for green, yellow, blue, orange and red. Green is not being in any trouble (a smiley face,) yellow is a verbal warning, blue is 5 minutes off student choice time, orange is 10 minutes off of student choice time, and red is 15 minutes off students choice time and parent is notified. The students have precedures for walking down the hall (hand on the hip, one on the lip) so that they are quite in the hallway and they sit “criss-cross apple sauce” on the carpet. I think these little things remind them to not be disruptive.

Inquiry

Questions for inquiry are important on both the part of the student and the teacher. In order for inquiry to take place, students and teachers must make observations, ask questions, study what is known, investigate, gather, analyze, and interpret data, propose answers, explanations, and predictions, and share results (NSES 134.) This is important because it allows students to take a deeper look into what they are studying and come up with/understand the reasoning behind scientific knowledge. Questions for inquiry are important because it goes beyond memorizing facts by allowing one to investigate and understand meaning. This is important because students can then use this knowledge, make sense of it, and apply it to their everyday lives. Inquiry allows one to try and find answers, rather than just memorizing answers. Inquiry is important for teachers because it allows them to develop both long-term and short-term goals for their students. Inquiry is also a way to get all students involved because it allows for students to develop ways that they can participate fully in science learning. Inquiry is important because it allows learners to engage in scientifically oriented questions, it gives priority to evidence, allows students to put together explanations, and it allows students to relect on their scientific understanding through communication. Helping students develop meaningful questions will allow them to answer their questions in a meaningful way, based on understanding through inquiry.
1. How do ancient animal fossils provide evidence about extinct life in a certain area?
2. What do plant fossils tell us about a habitat of a certain area?

Field Day 4- 5 Senses

This week in placement the students did a science lesson about the 5 senses. My CT used what I guess could be compared to a mnemonic device in order to help the students remember the 5 senses. She had them take their hand and put their thumb by their ear for hearing, their index finger by their eyes for sight, their middle finger by their nose for smell, their ring finger by their lips for taste and their pinky by their mouth for taste. I thought this was a really good way for the students to be able to remember the 5 senses, and they all seemed to understand what the senses are by using this trick. My CT explained what each of the five senses are and what we used them for, and then the students did an activity where they searched through magazines for images that could represent the five senses. They had to cut the pictures out and glue them to a poster. The students seemed to enjoy this activity, and it made them think hard. When I was walking around talking to different students, it was interesting to hear them explain why they chose a certain picture. I think it was helpful to them when I asked “why did you pick that picture for __ sense?” Then they would explain why they chose a certain picture and it allowed them to check their own understanding and see if the picture they chose was really representative of the sense they picked it for.
Another thing I thought about today was how my CT always wears a lab coat for the science lesson. Thinking back to last weeks readings, I think this is a very good image for the students to see. My CT is a female without “crazy hair, crazy glasses etc,” so it gives the students an image of a scientist that is very different from the “mad scientist” that is often depicted.

#3 Light and Shadow

To know if a student understands a benchmark, I would like to see the student demonstrate their knowledge to me. Students can do this by explaining in their own words what they learned from a specific benchmark. If a student can re-explain a concept, I think it gives a good indication as to whether or not they understand a concept. Another way of knowing if a student understands a benchmark would be to have the student apply what was taught to their own lives. This would let the teacher know if the student can make sense of what was supossed to be learned and actually apply it in a relevant way that is meaningful. By applying a benchmark to their own life, a student would have to take what he or she knows and then “do it.” The students would have to take the key concepts and apply them to a real-world context. We can help students to do this by having a positive and ethusiastic attitude towards science, and by giving students pre-tests in order to help clear student’s misconceptions.