Sparking Science Through Technology

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...