Sparking Science Through Technology

Today was the last day of my Science Methods class.  I learned so much throughout the course of this semester about how to teach science to students and also about technology in the classroom.  The fieldwork and projects that we did really helped me to get a better understanding of the inquiry method, which was the main focus of the class.  After taking this class I know feel that I have a better understanding of how to teach science to students and I have some strategies that I could use in my future classroom.  This course made me realize that in order for students to be engaged in learning science it really needs to be hands-on.  Through the use of inquiry learning the students are being able to learn using a hands-on approach. Throughout this course, my colleagues and I created eFolio's which are a collection of all the important work that we did throughout the semester.  Some of the things that are included in my eFolio are my philosophy of t...

While going through this course one of the requirements was to do a practice edTPA practice on our fieldwork experience.  What edTPA is, it is a collection of three different tasks and within those tasks are different subsections.  In each of these subsections, I had to upload different documents based on what I did in my fieldwork.   The first task was on planning and the different materials, assessments, and lesson plans that I used in my fieldwork.  I had to take a picture of all of the materials that I used for each of the lessons that I taught and put them into a document to upload.  For the assessments section, I had to again take pictures of the three different assessments for each lesson and upload them in a document.  It is edTPA formate to put everything in pictures and have very little words.  The next section was putting my lesson plan on a document and putting that up.  The last section was a commentary on my planning f...

For my class, it was a requirement that we complete a science fair project.  For my project, I did keeping your candy cool with the power of evaporation.  This experiment helps explain the process of evaporation in a fun way.  I chose this experiment to gain more knowledge on how evaporation works.  Before I started doing this experiment I knew what evaporation was but I did not know that it could keep the candy from melting, so it was really neat to see how that works.  In one of the articles that I read it talked about how when evaporation is used to cool an object, it is called evaporation cooling and it is one of the greatest phenomena.  One thing that I found interesting from reading the articles is that when we sweat that it is our body trying to cool down.  Our bodies are using evaporation cooling to keep us cool so that we do not overheat and pass out on a hot day.  This was something that I did not know before doing this experiment an...

Today during class me and two of my other classmates taught a lesson to the class on fossils.  Fossils were something that we and my classmates were not too familiar with so we figured the best way to learn was by learning it ourselves and then teaching it to the rest of the class.  Not only did we learn a lot more about fossils but we also got more experience with teaching!  We designed a full lesson with a pretest, development, and posttest.   To pre-assess the class we showed them a picture of a fossil and asked the class if anymore knew what this was a picture of.  After a small pre-assessment, we moved into the development part of our lesson, where we had lots of information to share about fossils.  We taught the class about what a fossil is, the different kinds of things that it can tell us, and how they are formed.  We showed a short video to help further explain how fossils were formed and also what we could use fossils for. Once we...

Throughout this fieldwork experience, I have learned a lot of important things when it comes to lesson planning, implementing the lesson plans into the classroom, and working with my colleagues to design multiple lessons. When we were planning our first lesson which was our direct instruction lesson some of the things that we needed to keep in mind were what the students already knew when we pre-assessed them.  We also had to make sure that we were covering all of the material that was presented in the textbook since the students were learning the material for the first time.  It was important to include the key vocabulary terms from the chapter and make sure that the students were taking notes on them throughout the lesson.  Another thing that is important when lesson planning is making sure that there are enough guided practice activities for the students to really master the concept that was taught.  For our direct instruction lesson, we did one activity with ...

Today was our final day with our fourth-grade students.  It was a very emotional day for the students and the teachers as well.  The students had made such a bond with us over the past month and they had really enjoyed having us teach them about the solar system.  We began the class by doing the solar system rap that one of the groups had used for their lesson and the students were so excited that they got another chance to do the rap again! We asked the students what their favorite part of having the teacher candidates teach them was.  A lot of the students said that they liked the activities that we had planned for them throughout our lessons.  The students also liked how knowledgeable we were on our topics and how we were able to answer the questions that they had to the best of our ability.  After we let the students share some of their favorite parts of having us teach them we gave them a test to see what they had learned throughout our teaching ex...

Today our last group was starting their direct instruction lesson on how technology is used in science and space.   The teachers started by establishing classroom rules and demonstrating the way that they would get the students attention, which was, hands on top everybody stop.  Having fun ways to get the students' attention is good because they are more likely to pay attention when the saying is fun instead of just having the teacher say the same thing over and over.  Like the other groups, the teachers gave the students a note sheet to fill in while the teachers were teaching the lesson.  There were different symbols throughout the lesson presentation where the students would know if they needed to copy something down or turn and talk with a partner.  The teachers talked about all the different kinds of technology that is used in space like telescopes, satellites, rocketships, and other technologies.   To see what the students had learned...

After our students had finished learning about the inner planets it was time for them to learn out the outer planets.  The teachers that were teaching about the outer planets were so excited to teach this topic and had so many fun things planned for the students.  The teachers gave each of the students three Popsicle sticks and each of them had a different outer planet on them.  One of them was red and the students were to raise that if they did not understand something, one was blue and that was if the students somewhat understood, and green was if they completely understood and the teachers would know to move on with the lesson.  Throughout the lesson, the students would have notes that they were filling in.  The students were also turning and talking about the answers to the questions that the teachers were asking throughout the lesson.  For the guided practice the teachers had a vortex game on the smart board that the students played.  The stude...

After my group had finished teaching about the Earth and its patterns the second group began the next day teaching about the inner planets.  They started their direct instruction lesson by setting some ground rules for the students to follow and had a really cute way of getting the students attention, mac and cheese eyes on me and the students would respond with beef stew eyes on you.  They pre-assessed the students with a word cloud and had a live stream of what the Earth looked like at that exact time, this really got the students engaged in what they were going to be learning about.  Throughout the lesson the students were to take notes in the note packet that they were given in the beginning of the lesson and this would help them with an exercise that they did later on.  Throughout the lesson the students were doing different things like turning and talking about what the teacher had just taught.  This way the students were able to share their ideas abou...

Today we taught our fourth graders about the seasons in a fun activity.  We used inquiry learning to teach them about how the sun is in a different position and that is what makes the different seasons.  The inquiry method was a new teaching method for me and my group mates but we seemed to grasp the concept and deliver a great lesson! To start the lesson we gave the students a problem.  We used a Voki which is a voice-over animation, to tell the students the problem that we had for them.  The Voki grabbed the students attention and made them eager to get started on the activity. The first thing clue that we gave the students was a journal entry that would give them a little overview of what season they might have.  From this journal entry, the students were to make a hypothesis, which is a guess on what season they might think they have.  One thing that we could have done differently is had the students read their hypotheses out loud so tha...

Today was the first day of really teaching for me and my group! We are currently teaching to a fourth-grade classroom at Bishop Dunn.  After many hours of working together on our direct instruction presentation and getting our materials ready it was finally time.  The topic that we were teaching to the students was the Earth, Sun, and Moon.  The students seemed really excited about this topic since they already knew some stuff about it and were eager to learn more.  Our first lesson was our direct instruction lesson where we taught the students all the information they would need to know about the Earth, Sun, and Moon.  We taught them a fun way to remember rotation and revolution using their hands.  Throughout the lesson we would ask the students questions to check their understanding after a student would answer we used the thumbs up/down method to see if the rest of the class agreed with the answer that was said.  My group and I also used the m...

Today we got to meet the fourth grade students at Bishop Dunn Memorial School.  These are the students that we are going to be teaching our science lessons to throughout the semester.  The students were so excited to see us and were eager to see what was in store for them.  We started off the first day with an icebreaker.  Each group had their own type of icebreaker to do with the students and we would rotate students every couple of minutes so that we were able to see all of the students in the class. The icebreaker that my group had consisted of different colored Popsicle sticks and questions about the earth, moon, sun, and also about me.  The students would go one at a time and pick a Popsicle stick from the jar.  They would read the question aloud for the rest of the students to hear and then they would answer the question.  If they did not know the answer to some of the science questions they were able to ask a friend for help.  The differe...

Students today are noticing everything in the world around them, they are coming up with questions about why things are the way they are.  As teachers, it is our job to make sure our students understand the answers to these questions.  Students often have misconceptions about certain things or a topic in general.  Their misconceptions are how we as teachers know where to start teaching them. Inquiry-based learning starts with a question that the students have to answer through solving problems.  The cycle for inquiry learning starts with asking an "I wonder" question and then having the students brainstorm possible ways to figure out the answer to the question, this is called the acquisition part of the cycle.  After they have brainstormed they come up with an "I think" statement and then design a plan and test it.  After they have tested they collect their results and analyze them and get ready to share with the rest of the class.  Students...

This past weekend I attended one of the most useful workshops that I have ever gone to.  It was Project Wild, a workshop that focuses on wildlife and how to better teach it in the classroom.  It was all hands-on which I enjoyed because that's how I believe science should be taught.  As I future teacher I am always looking for new ways to implement concepts into my future classroom and this was definitely one of them. The day was full of mini-activities that we could use in our classrooms to help teach our students about wildlife in a fun manner.  We first started the day with an who am I activity which would allow students to guess animals by asking different questions.  Some of the animals were a little more difficult so I would teach about wildlife before playing this game.  Another fun game that we played was Oh, Deer! Some of the students would be deer and the others would be resources such as water, food, and shelter.  All of the ...

With today's technology advancing there are so many new programs coming out that we have never heard of.  Some of these programs can be very beneficial to us as future teachers.  I recently did a project for my Science Methods class and I used a new program that I had never heard of.  I found this program to be very useful and could be useful in a classroom as well.  As a future teacher I think that we need to step away from boring old power points, they don't engage the students anymore.  Students are looking for programs that are exciting, ones that they can record their voice on and play it back to the class.  Where they can add more than just words, but also pictures.  The program that I used was similar to what some of my fellow classmates had used in the way that it could be turned into a movie.  A lot of programs today have voice recording so that students and teachers can record a voice to go along with the pictures, this is also I think h...

A natural disaster struck the state of Texas this past week, that disaster was Hurricane Harvey.  Harvey was labeled as a Category 4 hurricane.  The category of a hurricane is determined by the intense winds that it produces.  Harvey produced 130 mph winds in some places of Texas.  Harvey was soon later labeled a tropical storm because of the mass amounts of rain that it produced.  In some parts of Texas, the rainfall amount was around 50 inches.  People were evacuating their homes before the storm even began.  The stores were running out of water and food, it was truly the worst tropical storm Texas had seen. When a storm like this strikes a state or any nation they rely on the rest of us to help out after the disaster.  There were numerous shelters that were set up where people could go and sleep because their houses had been destroyed.  The American Red Cross also had numerous blood drives and were collecting food and money to go...

September 5, 2017 Today for our class we had a guest speaker, Dr. Michael Edelstein.  He has been teaching for a number of years and is an expert on Climate Change.  Climate Change is something that is affecting us today and we as future teachers are going to need to know how to teach our future students about this topic.  A key word I learned today when learning about climate change was sustainability which is how do we live our life so that other generations can live their lives the same way, in other words, how do we not destroy everything that we have on earth. There are a lot of harmful chemicals in the environment that we do not even know about.  One of these chemicals is found in our local water supply and is not commonly known to a lot of people, the chemical is PFOS.  Harsh chemicals like this get into our water from us using different fossil fuels.  In order to stop putting harsh chemicals into the environment, we shoul...

When I was in science class in elementary school we did not use computers like they do today.  We used chalkboards and paper and pencil.  The only technology that we used was the overhead and the projector.  We rarely ever used the computer, most of the activities that we did were hands on.  In some of the classrooms where I have observed, students are learning science in all different kinds of ways, such as hands on and digitally. Within the first week of class, I realized that we are not teaching to the same kind of students that I once was, we are teaching to digital learners .  There will no longer be paper and pencil tests or assignments in the classrooms, everything is going to be done online.  We are learning to become digital teachers.  We are learning new strategies and techniques that will better help us teach to our students in the future. With the new strategies that we are learning, we will be better able to help and assist our stud...