Week of August 24th, 2009

The first day of classes went well, to say the least. The students seemed to pick up on Jen’s enthusiasm for science right away. Seeing as the class starts at 8 am, it took some of the students more time to warm up to the idea of getting up and moving around so early! Today, the students participated in a “science phobia’ walk where they were to reflect on their ideas and preconceived notions of teaching science and the science instruction they have had in the past. A lot of the students commented how they like science classes when they are hands on and interactive processes – perfect for what we are trying to accomplish! We talked about the concept of how students love for science trails off, more or less when they enter high school. My thoughts are slightly biased in the fact that I have always had a love for science. This concept is important to think about as I enter my future profession as a teacher. I need to constantly be finding ways to engage my students, and make science both fun at the same time a beneficial learning experience. From watching the students unfold this week I realized that students like hands on and acting like kids! When the activities were interactive and in groups the students seemed more interested in participating willingly.

As a future educator, I need to turn curious minds on early in student’s lives – but more importantly find ways to keep them turned on as they go through elementary and middle school. Planning many hands on tasks seems like a great place to start! After the ‘phobia’ walk, the students participated in the “Nature of Science” activity. This was another interactive activity. They were given only so many puzzle pieces and were asked to find out what they think the whole puzzle might look like when completed. The students made hypotheses based on the information they had been given. As in most scientific research, more information is discovered as time passes; the students were then asked to

pick out more puzzle pieces and see if their hypotheses changed or stayed the same based on this new evidence. The concept that was pulled from this activity was the fact that scientists don’t always have the answers and there isn’t ever a ‘finishing’ point. More information brings about more theories, more theories can be proven wrong, hypotheses will be re-worked time and time again before anyone will ever get it ‘right’ – (if there is such a thing). Another major concept that we touched on was the fact that the scientific method isn’t a linear process. Ideas and hypotheses change over time and don’t form in a systematic order. The concepts that were addressed this week I feel very confident in my understanding.

I believe the role of a teacher is very important in a science classroom. Taking for instance the reactions I heard from the first day of class alone. At the end of class I already heard people commenting on how great of a professor Jen was and how they knew this was going to be a fun class. The fact that Jen had that much of an impression on the students from the get go is something that I hope will occur in my future classrooms as well. The role of the teacher in a science classroom isn’t to be the ‘know all to end all’ person. They are their students ‘peer’ and should work alongside their students – not cramming facts and information into their brains. The teachers role is to find ways for students to lift the content off the page of a text book and bring it to life in a way that makes sense to each and every one of their students. During the activity Jen and I didn’t provide all of the answers, rather we stepped back and asked guiding questions to probe the students thinking process. This is a much more effective process than giving students the answers when they ask for them. Good teachers need to make students search and continually learning. A good teacher should themselves be a life-long learner. My learning won’t stop when I exit the confines of Winona State, I will constantly be finding and researching new information to better my own knowledge as well as my teaching

strategies. Jen doesn’t use a text book. In this day and age, there is so much information at our fingertips that is available to us at the click of a button. An important role in teaching effectively is to guide your students to find out where the best and accurate information can be found by providing resources. When we did the leaf collection, rather than looking the answers up in a book, Jen provided an interactive website for the students to click through while identifying their leaves. The students seemed to like this much more – as it was more visually appealing to them.

Another important concept that was addressed throughout this week was when we become future teachers, the using of our community as a lab. There is so much information and amazing stuff you can learn by utilizing the things that surround you. There is no need to plan an expensive trip to a cave to go and look at rocks. All you need to do is take a step outside – science is all around us! When we did this in class the students seemed more interested in the content as well as excited to find out new information about the world around them. They seemed to grasp the concepts we were trying to explain more when they could relate it to something that was concrete as well. They were able to touch and manipulate the leaves and compare them to other ones around the area. I would believe that this would be the same, if not more important for our younger children in our elementary classes in the future.

Week of August 31, 2009

This week started out quite slow in the sense that the students were quieter when Monday arrived, but it was amazing to see the transformation by the time we reached day three! During this week the students worked on their leaf identifications on Monday, watched a video about the ‘Birth of Earth on Wednesday, and worked with more classification of the Solar System on Friday. The broad concept of classification, I realized

this week is crucial for students to grasp the concept of. Science is all about classification, and sometimes we take that for granted. While working on the leaf identification project this week, I noticed that the students looked to me as if I knew all the answers. To tell you the truth, my confidence in leaf identification dates back to my sophomore biology class – so I knew about as much as they did! I was amazed at how much I learned from the students in a short amount of time. Although they looked to me to validate their answers, I would pose more questions in hopes that my question would lead them to find more information to better their hypothesis of what the leaf might actually be. Students in my future classroom might do the same exact thing, and to be honest I’m sure I won’t have the answers 99% of the time. The important thing to do is to channel those questions and encourage children to find out more about their topic of interest. I as a teacher, of course will lead them to reliable sources to continue their search, and encourage them to share their new found information with the class. We need to celebrate creative minds, and falling back on ‘I don’t know…” just doesn’t cut it.

On Wednesday of this week, we watched a video on the creation of the Earth. The students seemed to have enjoyed it, as I had already known/seen a lot of this same information in Jenn’s GEO 130 class last semester. It is important for the students to know how we got here! So much can be learned from studying the early biology, chemistry and geology of the Earth. It is important to lay groundwork for everything else in the course, so what better way to do it than to start from where it all began! Watching the video again made me realize that even though I might know the ‘general’ background of a topic, it never hurts to watch something again and re-learn the information to help fill in the gaps. I felt rather confident with the information that was presented, as it was still rather fresh in my memory from last semester. It was easy for me, after watching the movie, to really engage in the student’s questions and begin to answer them.

Some of them were ‘way out their’ questions – and Jenn did the best she could to answer them and help the students find places to find the answer on their own. I realized sometimes this week that students would pose a question, I knew the answers, but it was hard for me to sometimes put what I wanted to say into words. This is an important concept when it comes to my future classroom. I may understand the concept myself, but that doesn’t mean that my students will after I explain it. I need to find various ways to present information, rather than just the way that I have learned it.

Friday of the week truly astonished me! The students really grabbed hold of the amazing information that was provided in the movie. Some were shocked, some were scared, others were unshaken. The fact of the matter is that such an amazing topic caused so many different emotions for the students at once. To see the students so enthused about finding out more about the formation of our planets and the moon really made Jenn and I happy. The questions kept coming and coming, and it was really important that Jenn didn’t cut any of the students off, or make them feel like their ideas where crazy. She took each question in and made sure that each student in the class had at least a basic knowledge of the answer. I am always amazed at the way that Jenn relates to the students. When explaining concepts, she has one of the best methods I have seen to this date. Instead of ‘barking’ out information to the students she finds interesting ways, such as story-telling to make something that might seem rather dull, a fascinating and engaging topic. I hope that my same passion shows through in my future classroom as much as hers does! The best thing is, is that the students feed off of this positive energy. I saw such a turn-around today in the fact that the kids were searching deeper for answers, and more engaged than they have been before.

We also did an activity today that focused on more classification. The students were handed out cards that had characteristics of 30 different planetary bodies. Without giving the students the names of the bodies, they were to look at the data on the card and categorize them into a way that made sense to them. The students approached the situation from various angles, and it was really interesting to see how they arose at their answers. No one group ended up with the same list, and this was a good thing! The students were asking great questions, and thinking really hard about what this information told them about our solar system. I felt rather confident in the information that was being presented about the solar system because we had learned most of this in Jenn’s class last semester. I found it a lot easier to interact with the groups in this inquiry based activity. When I worked with them, I wouldn’t give them the answers, but provide them with another path to venture down that might help in their categorization. I might have thrown the groups off at times, but my information served a purpose, and that was to get the students thinking down more than one path.

During these activities, Jenn and I surveyed the room. We would walk up to a group and ask them to explain their through process before we posed anymore questions. By allowing the children to explain their data first, they could provide and un-biased opinion of what they thought. Sometimes, as soon as a teacher says something, students assume it’s the ‘word’ and there is no other way to think about it. We would then pose questions, and have groups analyze what other groups were doing during the process. We encouraged the students that they were on the right track, and this kept them motivated and searching for the ‘right’ answer. A lot of the students were quite overwhelmed when they first got the cards, but as they looked at the ‘whole picture’ of the situation and related it to the smaller parts, they were able to understand and grasp the concept a lot better. One thing that really helped the students in this activity

was the fact that Jenn didn’t just give them a list of all of the data. I think that if she would have, this would have scared them off and made the task seem anything but possible. Instead, she made fun and interactive manipulative cards that the students could move and organize based on their ideas. This made the daunting task of finding out what all of these unknown items were much more bearable and fun. Instead of just introducing the planetary bodies to the students, and their names, the students were forced to answer their own questions by looking at the data.

Another important concept that we touched base on during this activity was the fact that politics and emotion play a crucial role in most science issues. Take for instance the debate over Pluto. Today, instead of just telling the students that ‘Pluto isn’t a planet –because the IAU said so,’ they had the opportunity to categorize it where they deemed it be the correct classification and find out for themselves. This is a great way for students to form their own understandings of a big concept rather than just having someone tell you how it is. This activity was something that Jenn has never done before, and she didn’t exactly know how it was going to pan out. We were both surprised at how well the students did with the activity as soon as they understood what exactly it was they were trying to accomplish. As future educators, we can’t be afraid to do an activity and have it fail. If we do that, it’s as if we doubt our students before we even give them a chance to prove themselves. I need to remember as a future teacher that even if an activity doesn’t go as planned, something beneficial can always be learned from the experience. When I was in high school, we did a lab that lasted over a month. When we came to the end of our experiment, the results we found had nothing to do with what we were trying to prove. This ‘mishap’ was truly magical, in the sense that it allowed us to probe deeper into the idea of why it didn’t work. Science is based on failure, and failure brings about change.

The students this week turned in their first four lessons for their resource collections. I believe it is such a good idea for the students to start submerging themselves in the massive amounts of science content that is out on the web for them. It’s not to go without being said that the children also need to learn how to find good and reliable sources, but making this collection of lessons is helping them to do just that. In doing this, when their in their future classroom, they will know where to find great activities and valid information, instead of scrambling to try and throw a meaningless activity together last minute. We noticed this week that some of the students were still having trouble with their observation/describing skills. Jamie and I offered up some activity ideas that might help the students next week, so we’ll see how this goes! I can only hope that next week the students will be as open and willing as they were today!

Week of September 7th

The first day of class this week consisted of a discussion of the solar system activity we conducted on the previous Friday. During class, the students were invited to share out their answers and findings to their solar system classification. They were able to compare answers, argue with one another on their findings as well as come to a general conclusion of how these planetary bodies should be sorted. I noticed that during the large group discussion that Jenn didn’t tell a group they were right or wrong, rather she took down all the information and waited to start sorting through it until everyone had a chance to voice their opinion. I think this is very important as a teacher. Even though we know the ‘right’ answer, sometimes the wrong ones make us start to question our knowledge of what is ‘right.’ We need to encourage all of our children to share out their ideas, no matter how ‘off’ they might be – they might add a valuable piece to the discussion. This inquiry based learning activity forced the students to create their own opinions and definitions of science

content, which in turn made it more meaningful to them as they could tie a more personal and concrete experience to the learning itself. I could tell by the end of the discussion that some students still hadn’t grasped the concept of the solar system fully. I think that some students would have benefited from a more ‘visually appealing’ diagram of the solar system. We had found out the next day that this is what Dr. Bates had done for her class, as it seemed to have helped aid their knowledge gain. Friday in class we drew out a diagram for the students to put in their notes and I really think it helped them to grasp the concepts better. Students don’t all learn the same; we know that, this is why it is so important to find different ways to present information. As a teacher, you can’t just assume because you understand something to be a ‘simple’ topic that your students will feel the same. Good teachers make sure to review information even after activities are concluded. In doing this, students will be able to apply their previous knowledge to the new content they are learning as well as work out any last minute misunderstandings.

The next activity the students participated in was called ‘Millions of Billions.’ In this activity, the students were to calculate the distances of a million different objects (toothpicks, paperclips, elephants, people, etc.) The important thing about this activity was that the students had to find not only what the number values were, but they had to find a way to take the data they calculated and convert it into something that a young elementary student would be able to visualize. Teachers throw the numbers ‘millions’ and ‘billions’ around without some of their students ever being able to conceptualize how much these numbers actually are. Using this activity helps take these ‘big’ numbers and turn them into something more feasible for younger students to understand. I found myself, after revealing the answers that I was even surprised as to some of the distances and amounts of time it would take to reach a million, and a billion. This project tied directly into connection the big numbers we use

in distances in the solar system as well as the geologic time scale, which is where we were headed next.

I feel confident in my understanding of the geologic/biologic history of Earth, so I was quite excited about the next project. The students were instructed to create their own timeline of important events in their lives. In doing this, they were forced to come up with a proper scale, as well as making a more personal connection with the concept that was being covered. This small scale and informal project served as an introduction to the bigger project that was to follow. Having an activity beforehand that your students can ‘practice’ more or less will help to ensure that they grasp a well-rounded understanding of the topic before diving right in. After the students created their own personal timeline they made their very own geologic time scale on a 5 meter piece of paper. The night before class, Jamie and I took the time to make our very own examples to use in class. While doing this, I was still surprised by the difficulty in grasping the vast amount of time that passed before humans evolved on Earth. The tape served as a visual representation at just how spread out all of these events is in the history of the Earth. It’s a good idea as a future teacher to always have an example ready for your students. This really helped when the students were hung up on how they wanted to organize their data. You want your students to know however, that just because you did it one way, that there isn’t another right way to do it as well. The thing that Jenn did that I really liked about this activity was that she didn’t really give much of an introduction. The children were handed the dates and had to work together with their partner to find out how to start plotting these things on their timeline using a reasonable scale so that all fit on the strip of paper. The students had a hard time dealing with the millions of years ‘ago’ they wanted to plot them as years like they are used to doing in most cases. The counting backward thing tripped some of the students up at first, but after they talked it through with Jenn and me they were able to

understand the concept more. It was cool to see how the students approached the same project differently. Due to the fact that they weren’t giving strict guidelines, many different systems of plotting the information emerged. Some groups got a hold of it right off the bat, while others were more meticulous with their calculations and hadn’t gotten much done before the end of class.

The students will be continuing to work on this project on Monday. Another thing that is very important when working with timeline type activities, is to make sure the students understand what these dates and events mean. Jenn, at the end of class assigned the pair of students the task of dividing up these events and researching information on what they mean to the field of biology and geology. They were instructed to find two sentences to explain what happened at each event and be able to explain them to their partner upon returning. The fact that the work was divided up as well provides an opportunity for the students to teach one another the information they became an expert on. I always liked having to explain information I learned to other people because it helps me to make sure I understand it as much as I think I do – and sometimes I am quite wrong. It’s one thing to understand information for yourself, but when you’re responsible for the learning of another individual, you better hope you have multiple ways to explain it!! I learned that from working with the students in this class especially. I would try to explain something the way I had learned it, and some of them would look at me with blank stares – eventually I have to find another way to alter the way I am presenting the information to the students. It can be quite difficult but I’m still learning

Week of September 14th

In looking back at the week, it feels like Monday was so long ago! During the first class of the week, the students finished up working on their timelines with their partners. When they had all finished, Jen had them hang them up on the wall, matching up

the start and ending points of the timeline. Jen used this technique as a means to check the student’s answers, as well as a visual to start discussing the important topics in Earth’s history. The students seemed to engage more in the discussion, when they could compare something that they personally created to what was being said. If a problem or discrepancy in timelines arose, the children could look to their notes and the others timelines to check and see where they went wrong. Not only was this a good discussion mechanism, but the timeline also can be something that these students can carry with them and use in their future classroom someday. I think all too many times in college, professors sit and lecture at us until we’re blue in the face, and the truth is, no matter how old you are, people love reverting back to their childhood and making a hands-on project –which our students clearly did! It was awesome to hear the discussion that I did while the students were working on their projects and going through the timelines. I heard students interacting with other groups, as well as groups discussing their impressed states when looking at the massive amounts of time in between each of these significant events they were plotting on the timeline. During this entire activity Jen and I stood back and let the children make their own discoveries. I think it would have been really cool to have the students go home and find a few more important events in the history of the earth that they could share with the class and plot them on their timelines as well. Timelines in elementary school, I believe will be very beneficial. Making a classroom timeline to use in all subjects, I think, would be a really awesome idea. Sometimes when dates are thrown out at me, I never really put them into context. This way, whenever a new date was added to the children’s vast bank of knowledge, they could plot it on the classroom timeline, and compare it to other events they have already discussed. This is a great visual, and something that I think students would enjoy doing throughout

an entire year! Think of how many dates would be take over your classroom walls!

Wednesday was somewhat of a low-key day. We watched the second part of the origin video, this time focusing on the development of life on our planet. I could tell this time around, the students weren’t as engaged in the movie. After watching it, Jen asked the simple question, “So? What did you think?” One student said, “that just stated everything you’ve already told us.” While another said “I liked the other video a lot better.” It’s indications like this, that help us as teachers to better our learning activities. If they don’t work the first time around, or don’t seem to do what we wanted to discuss justice, we have the opportunity to revamp it for the next time around. Don’t get me wrong, the movie had a lot of beneficial information for the students, but it was a little too specific for the information that I know Jen and Kim were trying to cover when talking about the origin of the Earth. This is another important thing as a teacher that I need to keep in mind. Movies are great, but only if they serve the purpose that you intend them to. From our curriculum planning meeting, I kind of got the sense that Jen and Kim needed a activity time filler, and this movie provided a basis for that. Even though it contained relevant content, the students were bored with hearing the same things they have already heard. The movie brought out some great questions in some of the students and made them probe deeper into the complex systems and events that formed our planet. I was impressed by some of the questions they were asking, and didn’t quite know how to go about answering them myself! So in looking at this outcome of watching the video, I wouldn’t say that it was a complete waste of time!

At the conclusion of the movie, the students were introduced to the compound microscopes. They did an introductory lab that helped them to become familiar with the basic parts and functions

of their microscopes. We need to remember that we can’t just assume that everyone has had the same experience working with microscopes. I know personally, in my time at Winona State I have had to use a microscope ONCE and that was this Wednesday…and I’m a science major!!! So to say the least, I was just as familiar with these scientific instruments as any of the other students in the class. I paired up with one of the students and worked along with her to go through the activity. A lot of the students seemed to think that using a microscope was a walk in the park, but soon found that statement to be false. The students could use a microscope, yes, but use a microscope correctly? No. The students found very quickly that this activity was going to take them longer than they had thought it was going to. We realized that as the students were working through the activity, even though they had a detailed lab printed out next to them to follow that they didn’t REALLY read the content of this lab (myself included!) oops! We need to make sure we are clear on our instructions before we just throw the kids into an activity, assuming that they will read every detail on the handout. At the conclusion of class Jen told the students that they would be working more with the microscopes on Friday, and that they were to bring in interesting stuff from home to look at. The students seemed to have some crazy ideas when they began to brainstorm all of the items they could bring in! I liked Jen’s idea to squash some gnats and look at them under the microscope. Hopefully after working with the microscopes more on Friday, I will feel even more confident in my skills of using them! Today definitely helped, and made me regain my confidence in using them!

Today we conducted the “What is Life” experiment. The students were to set up bottles containing a mystery substance. (One contained yeast, while the other was sand.) The students, through experimentation needed to determine which one of the two was alive, and uncover the meaning of what it means to actually be alive.

Today, the students started out the class by discussing what it means to be alive as a preparation for the lab they were about to conduct. They did a pretty good job and seemed to generate a pretty well rounded list – some things that I didn’t even think to include. Jen seemed to be very pleased with the vast amount and diverse answers the students provided. After distributing mystery substance A (yeast), and mystery substance B (sand), the students were supposed to make predictions as to which of the two substances were alive. The students clearly knew right away, and seemed to have ‘written’ off the lab from the start because there really wasn’t much ‘mystery’ to them as to which one substance was going to dissolve the sugar and blow up the balloon that was placed on top of their mixture. The students proceeded through the experiment, and still seemed to struggle with the point of taking notes. The students would ask ‘do I have to write this down? ‘Or How detailed do I need to be?’ I would answer by saying, if you don’t write it now, you won’t be able to recall it later. The more detailed you are the first time around the better off you’ll be in the end when it comes time for the exam.

One thing you need to always be prepared for as a teacher is to expect the unexpected! Today, one of our students, mid-class, started talking about the aphid larva that has been so obnoxiously flying around campus. We began talking about how the aphids seem to be more attracted to bright colors. Jen instantly had an idea, lets TEST IT!! We gathered 6 different colored bowls and went and placed them out in the rock garden. We were testing to see if in fact our hypothesis about the attraction to bright colors was true. I went out and set up the experiment, and forty minutes later we had our results! The hypothesis we had proposed was true! The yellow bucket was COVERED in aphids! So now, Jen turned this ‘hunch’ into a teachable moment. As teachers there will be many learning opportunities that will be presented to us that don’t exactly follow the outline path we had originally intended ourselves to take. These moments and

activities can sometimes prove to be more beneficial to the students because they came up with the experiment themselves and want to probe and find out more. When moments like these arise we need to be willing to TAKE them! The students really enjoyed doing this!

Overall, this week went very smoothly and the students seemed to enjoy doing MORE hands-on activities than we have the previous weeks. Next week we will be starting discussing the structure of cells, DNA, and heredity. I’m excited to learn about these subjects because I haven’t had a class that covered these concepts specifically since high school!

Week of September 20th

I was a little hesitant going into this week, seeing as we were starting heredity. Since I’ve been at WSU, I haven’t had an extensive class that covered this specific material. The last class I had that focused on genetics and heredity was in 10th grade! By the end of the week however, I was quite pleased with what I had learned. On Monday, the students brought in plant and animal cells that they had made at home for an assignment over the weekend. We didn’t spend any time in class, before the project was assigned, talking about parts of a cell and their functions. In doing this project over the weekend, the students were to construct their own definitions and explain the functions of each of the parts of their very own cell. In doing this, they were able to make a more concrete understanding, and refer back to a personal representation of a cell to better understand the information.

It was really neat to see the different types of cells that were created. Some of the students just drew a diagram of a cell (which wasn’t allowed under the guidelines Jen had set forth), some made food representations of cells, and others used random household items. We posed the question to the students whether

or not this task was hard or easy. Most of them said it was hard, because when they were little, it was easier to be creative, due to the fact that you they weren’t overanalyzing the task at hand. The students said they had trouble ‘envisioning’ a proper household item to represent each specific part of the cell, whereas, according to most of the class, a young child would have a smaller problem with this task because their imaginations haven’t yet learned to critically analyze model/scale this way yet. Another important thing to take away from this task was the fact that the students were required to use household items to represent a science concept. As teachers, we are going to have to pull a lot of resources for our students to use, and sometimes this can get very expensive. I was amazed at the items that students came up with in their cells, and as teachers, doing this activity cost us absolutely nothing.

We started talking about DNA, which is not Jen’s area of expertise. She proved to the students, that when we become future teachers, we aren’t going to know everything. We are constantly going to be re-teaching concepts and information to ourselves each time we teach (unless we have phenomenal memories of course!) Even so, Jen took a concept, DNA that she knew very little about, and made it seem as if she had been studying DNA her whole life. I love the quote, “Teaching is ¼ preparation, and ¾ pure theatre.” Jen proved this to be completely true. Although she prefaced her lecture by telling the kids she didn’t know very much about DNA, she was still able to pull together resources and learn enough to have an educated conversation/lecture with the class. The next project we took on was making DNA strands out of beads. The students LOVED this beyond belief. I’ve never seen COLLEGE student’s kids light up at the sight of something like they did when they saw the beads. While creating this fun project, they were still learning the concepts necessary to truly understand how DNA works. This was something also that they could take with them, as a concrete

manipulative to refer to when studying, and trying to remember the parts that make up DNA.

On Wednesday of this week, we worked through a Strawberry DNA extraction lab. Jen and I had both never done a lab like this before, but overall it ran very smoothly. One problem we ran into with this activity was time management. The preparation and lab set up time took a lot longer than we had anticipated. It’s never easy, when prepping a lesson to predict how long each specific task is going to take, because it’s going to be different for each diverse learner. Future teachers need to make sure they set enough time before and after the lab to introduce and wrap up the activity. We didn’t have time to wrap up the activity, and had to rush through the last part of it, which was the most important point the experiment was trying to make. The students all seemed to enjoy the process of the DNA extraction and were surprised to find that this was an activity they could conduct at their house, without any crazy lab chemicals or contraptions! DNA is an abstract concept, and for the students to actually be able to extract it from common items, such as a strawberry, made for a beneficial and insightful learning experience. To remedy the lack of time to finish up the activity, Jen summarized the results and reflected on them at the start of class on Friday. Over time, I’ve realized the students have opened up more and more. They start to ask me more questions, but also continue to ask the infamous: “is this right?” question. This relationship I’m forming with the students will help when I have to teach all by myself next week…I hope

Friday was by far my favorite day this week! The students were working through a genetics/heredity lab with Punnett squares and the Hardy-Weinberg Equation. I was surprised at how fast I had remembered my days of high school biology. I had always liked these types of problems, as I was super excited to help the students work through the packet. Today, more than

ever before, I realized that the students were directing more of their questions to me, and less to Jen. They were more willing to ask me what they deemed as ‘stupid’ questions and explain their though processes/hunches. One girl in particular was struggling with understanding dihybrid crosses. I could tell she was getting really frustrated, because she didn’t understand the content, but saw all of the other students whizzing through the packet and started to feel that she was ‘stupid’ (which is what she told me). I took this as an opportunity, to search my understanding of the content, and find a different way to present the information. I provided her with many helpful tips, as she seemed to grasp the concept more thouroughly after I had explained it a second time around. We broke up the procedure into steps, and made separate tables and charts to get the data. I think all of the letters and letter combinations crammed into one little Punnett square was too much information to analyze at once for her. So taking the process step by step, helped to calm her nerves and understand the content. I had her explain back to me what we had just done, to check her understanding, and this seemed to work, so I was happy with what I had accomplished! No two learners are alike, and I realized this as I saw her struggling to understand. By finding a different way to present the information, I was able to help her overcome her doubt and build confidence that she could understand the information just like everyone else in the class.

Today, it was announced in class that the students will be having their first exam next Wednesday. I saw the look of distress fall upon each one of the students faces as Jen began to discuss what will be required of them on the test. I think a lot of the information we have covered in this class, has gone in one ear and out the other, as they haven’t really taken the opportunity to analyze the data and content that we have covered and why it might be important to understand. Jamie and I are setting up a study session for the students next week, so we’re hoping that

this will help! I sent out an email today to the students letting them generate a list of questions and topics they would like us to touch on during this session, which will hopefully calm some nerves. I think for the most part, the students understand the content, they are just fearful of how they are going to be asked to apply this knowledge. Jamie and I also were asked by Jen and Kim to take full responsibility of teaching rock classification next Wednesday. I’m a little fearful, especially seeing as I have a GEO WHIZ that will be watching me when I teach this content to the students. I believe this will be a very beneficial learning experience for me, and hopefully for the students as well. I am pretty confident in my ‘rock’ skills, now it’s just a matter of sorting through what I know, and finding ways to relate and teach that to the student in the class in a way that they will understand.

Week of September 28th

This week was more of a non-traditional one, in comparison to the weeks that preceded it. It started out, as what seemed to be a chaotic, uncontrollable spiral into the state of the overwhelmed, but as the week went on it seemed to settle down. The prospect of knowing that we were required to teach a full lesson this week by ourselves, and provide two study sessions for the students was really weighing in on my capacity of tasks that I can handle in a given period of time. The thought of teaching, doesn’t scare me, as I think it would be a fantastic opportunity, it was the amount of time we were given to throw something together however that was stressing me out, while also providing the students with assistance to study for the upcoming test this Friday.

On Monday, the students spent most of their time wrapping up their Mendelian Genetics packet. They

shared out their data, compiled it as a class, and then analyzed the results. After introducing the Hardy-Weinberg equation, some of the students seemed to be rather lost. So as a class, Jenn took the time to dissect the equation, and find out what it actually meant. After she did this, the students seemed to grasp the concept rather well. Seeing as Jenn didn’t have the confidence to explain how it really worked, she managed to logically work through the problem, and make sense of it herself through her dissection. The students had the opportunity to practice using the equation more, and apply what they learned by analyzing their personal genetic make-up with their parents. The rest of the class was devoted to outlining what was going to be on the test. It was interesting to see how the class dynamic changed as everyone began to pull out their notebooks and frantically jot down everything and anything that came out of Jenn’s notes. Now, if we could only get the students to do this BEFORE we have a test in two days, that would be fantastic. We’ll have to figure out a way to do just that! The students asked a lot of good question, but were more worried about test format than content. I know from being a student myself, that the first test of the semester is always the most nerve-racking because you don’t know what to expect from your professor. In seeing how well the students interacted during the class sessions thus far, I think they will do relatively well on the test.

Wednesday of this week, Jamie and I planned an in-class review session for all of the students. It would have been super easy for Jamie and I to just print off a study guide, have them answer questions, and go through them. Instead of this mundane way of studying, Jamie and I took the way that we personally study, and presented it to the class. In the class we had 8 different tables set out with

activities that focused the students attention on the big concepts that were covered during our first unit. There were activities such as coloring and labeling cells, constructing DNA, a moveable historical timeline that they could make and take with them, practice with using and making dichotomous keys, and also punnett square practice problems. The students seemed to really enjoy and appreciate the time we took to set up these activities for them. Obviously there was not enough time for students to get to all of the tables, but there was enough activities printed out that they could take them home and work through them while studying later. That’s what we wanted to make this study session; interactive, hands-on and engaging, and I believe we succeeded in doing so. I stuck around for Jamie’s section of the class, as she was present for mine. It was interesting to see how the dynamic of the class changed as soon as Jen and Kim walked out of the room. The students were more willing to ask questions, even of Jamie, who they hadn’t ever interacted with before. The students started openly talking about their fears about the test, and their opinions of the class in general. This is something that I know probably wouldn’t have happened if Jen and Kim would have stuck around for the review session. I realized a lot of the questions that the students were asking were the ‘is this going to be on the test,’ type of question. The test hadn’t even been written yet, so it was quite hard to limit the student’s fears of test content, when we had no idea ourselves. In all reality, I kept telling the students, that they know more than they think they do! The content we covered contained a lot of different subjects that we just barely ‘dipped’ into, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed. I reinforced the fact that I had faith that they would do well on the test, if they had taken the time outside of class to

make connections and apply the knowledge they received within the past month.

It was interesting to see too, the different make-up of classes (mine vs. Jamie’s). My class is super small, so there is more of a personal connection to the students and the ability to communicate with each of them more frequently. I got a feel that my class was more confident in the content and about the test than Jamie’s class was. They seemed to be overwhelmed and started to believe that there was no way they would do well on the upcoming test. We actually heard some of the students saying ‘I think I might drop this class,” due to the fact that they had received back homework assignments before the study session, that not too many of them did so hot on. I think from a future teachers perspective, in Kim’s situation, I might have waited to hand back the assignments until after the test. Most of the stuff she handed back wasn’t going to directly impact the students studying. The bad scores they got made them feel like there was no way the y could make up ground now. I feel overall the study session went very well. The students were very appreciative of the work we put into the study session, and told us that it benefited them greatly. During our meeting with Kim and Jen on Wednesday, we sat in and helped them make up the test. From looking at it I felt that there were no major surprises, and the students would be challenged, but not so much that the test was impossible. For the test, we are doing it part of it individual, and part of it a group test. I believe this is a great idea, due to the fact that so much of the work the students do within this class is group based. We didn’t tell the students this, because we thought that it would limit the amount of time they spent studying. Tonight Jamie and I are going to take the test to make sure that

we believe the students will be able to work through it for Jenn and Kim. I haven’t gotten many emails from the students in the class, so I’m hoping that is because they are feeling confident about the content and their knowledge! Jenn and Kim gave Jamie and I the day off on Friday, so I am excited to hear how the test goes from the students. I hope they all do well, as I assume they should!

Week of October 4th

For the first class of the week the students worked on a rock classification project. They were given 24 rocks, and were instructed to come up with their own dichotomous key for the rocks. I could tell that the students were not looking forward to this task, as some of them stated; “another dichotomous key!” I could see the scared look on some of the students faces as they started to look through the rocks, due to the fact that this was probably the first time many of them had seen some of them. I felt extremely confident going into this upcoming week, and topics. Seeing as my first day of Jenn’s class I was required to ID 150 rocks, these 24 seemed like a walk in the park. What I started to realize was however, that I had to find new ways to explain to the students how I classified a rock as what it was because the way I understood it didn’t work for them. It forced me to think critically about a concept that I have so much confidence in. I was surprised at how well I could change around the concepts to make the students understand. Very little instruction was given in this inquiry based activity, which I think frustrated the students and made the task seem daunting and difficult. The students were given tools, to work towards making this dichotomous key and to help them distinguish differences between the rocks. They

were given HCl, water, a glass plate and hand lenses. I noticed right away that instead of the students relying on physical characteristics, they assumed that using the HCl and the glass plate was the way we wanted them to sort these rocks, when in reality, these tools are used to distinguish between limited amount of rocks, and shouldn’t be applied in all cases. After the groups constructed their dichotomous keys, the students passed them to the group next to them. The other group was supposed to take their key and key out the rocks in their bag. We found very quickly that the students couldn’t do it, which was the point Jenn was trying to make. The point was that there are so many discrepancies and personal observations that were included in the dichotomous key, that it was hard to know exactly what the other group had ID’d out. I think the groups would have done a better job if they would have known they were being graded on their dichotomous keys and how many the other group could correctly identify. It might be interesting to try that next year, or at least TELL them that they are getting graded so they care more about the task at hand, which I felt many of them did not, although I tried to keep them motivated.

Wednesday was another day of working with the rocks. Prior to this class period, the students were supposed to have looked up information on the rock cycle and the three main types of rocks. At the beginning of class, Jenn let the students lead a discussion about what they had researched and construct their own understandings of these topics using the whiteboards. The students then each shared out the information their group compiled. Jenn and I were very impressed at some of the information the students came up with, and it wasn’t like they just copied it from the internet and read it

out of their notes, but we could tell they actually took the time to internalize the concept and come to their own understanding of the topic. By allowing the students to construct their own understanding, it allowed for little lecture time directly from Jenn which I think the students really liked, and will have a better chance of remembering now when it comes time for the next test. After discussing the major terms associated with each type of rock, and their characteristics, the students were given the ‘correct’ dichotomous key on how to key out the 24 rocks in their collection. It was amazing to see the students work through IDing the rocks as most groups only had one or two questions. The main concerns arose when discriminating between color of the rocks. The dichotomous key was vague at times, and unless your geologist, you don’t really know that when they say ‘black’ they really mean dark grey ! I think I did a good job of handling the student’s questions, as I directed questions back to them, instead of just telling them if they were right or wrong. I would grab a group of rocks the students were debating and have them tell me how they were alike, and how they were different. One group struggled miserably with keying out the items. This was because they thought that it would be more efficient to start from the end of the key and work backwards, this wasn’t so whatsoever. I told them that I would help them at the start of the next class so they could make sure they had a grasp on the concepts before we moved on to the next subject, which only will be more difficult if they don’t understand the basic rock concepts. Overall the students really liked this class and activity, I feel that they walked away with a greater understanding, and felt confident in what they had accomplished.

Today the exams were handed back. The students did relatively well, and from the looks on their faces and the comments I heard, were pleased and surprised that they had done a lot better than they had anticipated. After we spent a little time going over the test, Jenn left the room, and I lead a discussion and conducted a survey on how the course is going thus far. I handed out the ’25 Ways to Get the Most Out of Now,” to the students and went over some of the ‘good’ techniques they found when studying. A lot of the students spoke out about how appreciative they were of Jamie and I putting in the time to make ‘inquiry’ based study sessions to help them grasp the science processes, not just the content, and asked if we could provide something like that for the next exam. After we talked through the handout, I gave the students a mid-semester evaluation for the course. After they were done filling them out, I lead a discussion on what they like about the course so far, what they don’t like, and how we can help them. For the most part, all of them had good things to say to me, and that they felt as if they were learning a lot, and that they will actually be able to use and apply the content they are learning in this class. Most of the students were happy with the way in which Jenn and I are handling the class, and enjoy the inquiry nature of the activities. One thing that the students were frustrated with were the resource collections they have to create. They have 16 lesson plan summaries that are looming over them, but they have known about them since the beginning of the course. I reminded the students that Jenn is not asking you to write a full blown lesson plan, just analyze how you would incorporate a pre-existing activity into your curriculum. I told the students that the resource collections that I have made like this one for other classes are the most beneficial things to have when

you get into your higher level education courses. I refer back to resource collections I have made all of the time. So although it seems like quite the workload, it will pay off immensely in the end. Overall, I feel that the class is running well, and no major changes need to be made, except finding better ways for our students to take notes.

Today we started an activity on plate tectonics, it was purely inquiry based in nature, which freaked a lot of the students out. They were frustrated and didn’t seem to quite understand what was going on at first, (which was the point), but as time went on they really started making connections and understanding what they were doing. I have confidence in my knowledge of plate tectonics, but I felt that my knowledge somewhat kept me from thinking about the activity the way the students were supposed to be analyzing the data. In this jigsaw activity, one group analyzed a map that focused on earthquakes around the plate boundaries, another on volcanoes, one group geography and the other analyzed the sea floors. The students were divided up into expert groups, learning as much as they could about one certain map. They were to strictly make observations of the maps and not inferences. It was hard for me in the activity to not make the inferences or the facts that I know about these plate boundaries, so I had to step back, and think as if I were analyzing these maps for the very first time. After the students became experts in their topics, they got into their ‘jigsaw’ groups where they put the 4 different data sets together to make conclusions, and inferences on the nature of plate boundaries. I really liked the jigsaw teaching technique, because it allows students the opportunities to learn from one another. I think a lot of them felt weary about having to explain their data to their other group members, but could do so a lot more easily

then they had anticipated. I could see light bulbs going off as soon as the four maps were compared to one another. The students’ dialogue went from talking very little in their expert groups, to firing out ideas and correlations between the maps when in their jigsaw group. For the most part, Jenn and I stepped back from the situation and let the students make these discoveries on their own, without interfering more than we had to. I think the students are enjoying this activity, and having the opportunity to work with various different groups, learning from one another. We are continuing this process on Monday, and talking about our results as a class, I can’t wait to hear what the students came up with! They seemed to grasp the concept much better towards the end of the class, which will help in building a foundation of knowledge on the theory of plate tectonics.

Week of October 12th

This week was rather short, and low-key in terms of activities going on in the classroom. Monday this week the students were provided time to wrap up their plate tectonics activity. Jenn had the students share out their information to the class, from each jigsaw group, and allowed the students to come to a group conclusion based on the results that were common among all of the groups. They were surprised to see that the information they were able to gather by themselves was similar if not dead on to what the scientists use to classify these plate boundaries. This just goes to prove, that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to analyze and make sense of data. The end of the class was wrapped up by showing a short powerpoint on plate tectonics. Jenn started out the lecture by letting the students share what they knew about plate tectonics. Jenn, then used the information the students gave her to

build off of their knowledge and work through preconceived notions rather than to just spew out content to them, and the “right” answers. The students liked having a voice in the conversation, in order to construct their own knowledge. At the end of class, Jenn assigned the “Rock Story” project. The point of this activity was to allow the students to synthesize the knowledge they have learned about rocks, plate tectonics, and the history of the earth in to a culminating project. They were to come up with the life story of a rock, have it go through a number of geologic and biologic events, as well as each stage of the rock cycle. The students seemed to really like this project, and wanted to elaborate on it by making a picture story book to go along with the history of their rock.

Wednesday, Jenn and Kim gave us the day off. The students had the chance to catch up on their resource collection projects, and their rock story. I can tell the students are starting to get really bogged down, as they have gotten pretty far behind on their resource collections. The resource collection is an ongoing assignment, and they feel they are getting bombarded with too many other assignments to have any time to focus on it. Some of the students have been coming to me complaining, and I tell them to take a deep breath and think about how beneficial it will be to have all of these science lessons at your finger tips when you have to teach some few years down the road.

Friday we started a new concept. Weather. I’ve never really studied weather to greatly in depth, so it was interesting to see all of the different things that the students knew, and how I could relate it to my own science understanding of climate and weather. At the

start of the class, Jenn had the students brainstorm in groups, terms that you would need to know to understand weather and climate. After having time to compile this list, Jenn went around the room asking each individual student something they had written down, and had them explain it to the class. I really liked this activity, because it allowed for the students to lead the discussion on the topic of weather. One term or concept lead to another, and sooner than we knew it the board was filled with weather terms. Doing an introduction activity like this, nicely laid the groundwork for the upcoming activity the students would be taking part in. The students were to get into pairs, and pick a major weather topic from a provided list. This topic, was then to be explored by them, and a 15 minute presentation to the class will be given reporting out their results. When the students heard the “15” minutes, I saw the scared looks on their faces, seeing as that’s quite a bit of time for 2 people to cover. The thing they had yet to know was that they would be required to have an interactive piece to their presentation, and activity that they could replicate in their classroom some day, and one that would be beneficial to the class in learning about their specific weather topic. The students were very eager to explore their topic and find an activity that went well with it. Most of them found activities, and were having so much fun teaching one another about their topic of choice. The coolest thing, about this teaching method, which is another jigsaw activity, is that the students are 100% learning from one another. Jenn and I gave NO instruction other than the small discussion we had at the start of class, and just let the students run with it. By doing this, we were learning from our students as well, which is an important component of any functioning classroom. By having to

look up these activities and lesson plans, I believe the students were forming a more solid understanding of their topics, and I believe their classmates will too when they have to present to the class. They were able to form understandings through a very informal and inquiry based fashion. This activity is also a great way to get the students prepared for their field experience at CFC. A lot of them are nervous for having to teach, and teaching your peers, I think is more nerve racking than a room full of fourth graders. I’m excited to see how well they do when we present next Wednesday. Monday we are starting immunology. I’m not too confident with this topic, but bring on the MALARIA!

Week of October 19th

This week went a lot better than I had expected it to. It was a little chaotic with the switching of subjects between the days, but overall the activities flowed nicely together. On Monday we conducted a simulation on immunology, and the passing of diseases. I knew more about this concept than I originally thought I would, because Jamie and I actually conducted the same experiment with our health class last year. The simulation allowed the students to see how individuals can be carriers of the disease, but never show symptoms, like I was in the activity. Each student in the class had five strips of paper, and one student in the class was ‘infected’ with a disease, and had their paper coated in baking soda. The students had to go through multiple switches of their strips of paper to simulate the passing of a disease. The students seemed to enjoy doing an inquiry based lesson such as this one and were excited to see who the infected student was. After we conducted the activity, Jenn made a diagram of all of the student’s names in the class to

show how the disease passed from one student to another. This really helped to make the abstract concept they represented more concrete. The students could talk intelligently about what the activity was trying to show which stimulated great questions about the concepts of diseases and immunology that Jenn had the students ask Kim when she came in to help. The next activity we did was a virtual lab. The students were trying to detect a disease in three different patients. The students clicked through the lab online, pipetteing different substances, while being able to read through the process. Although the online activity had a lot of information, it was filled with a lot of mindless clicking, and therefore I don’t think the students really grasped the concept of it. We are planning to discuss the results in class on Friday, so I’m interested to see how that goes!

Wednesday was a laid back day as we just had the students present their findings on their weather topic. Overall the students did a great job of finding fun ways to present the information to the class. All had elementary based projects or experiments to accompany their information, but some were used intelligently, while others were more to just fill time. During the presentations, I think Jenn caught some of the students off guard. She was asking questions to the students on the spot to test their knowledge, but almost in a way that made some of the kids feel stupid. I thought it was important to ask the students questions such as these, but maybe not in such a high tension situation, or in a manner that undermined the students’ intelligence. I learned quite a bit about weather from this presentation, and I thought it was a great way to deal with the unit on weather and climate in general. Instead of the professor lecturing and having to make countless PowerPoints on

various weather related concepts, the students could specialize their knowledge, and teach what they learned to their peers, forming more meaningful connections to the content. The students will be able to think back to the hands on experiments and apply them to the content knowledge they have. This will help immensely from some of our visual learners when it comes time for our next exam.

Today in class we finished up the weather presentations and discussed the virtual lab experiment. I think I underestimated the amount some of the students would read during the online lab, but the fact that Jenn kept saying ‘you need to be able to intelligently discuss this on Friday, scared some of the students into paying more attention. They were able to understand the lab and apply it to the concepts we were learning, so it proved to be an overall good experience to add to the class. It allowed to see the possibilities that virtual games and computers can provide our students in aiding their learning. They formed great questions that led to deeper discussion and probing into complex subjects that Jenn didn’t personally have the answers to. It was nice that Dr. Bates was willing to come in and answer the students questions instead of just having Jenn answer with an “I don’t exactly know…” and never finding answers to these great questions. For the weekend, each student was assigned a pathogen to look up that they will be presenting on Monday.

Week of October 26th

This week has been very laid back in general. The students did another jigsaw activity where they presented their findings to the class. They were assigned a primary and secondary pathogen to conduct research on in order

to report back to the class. In order to present the students findings, Jenn had the students group with their ‘primary’ pathogen and make a poster compiling the information they found. I thought it was neat how Jenn had assigned a secondary pathogen as well, which allowed for the students to switch groups and analyze the poster the previous group had made, and add or alter information based on what they had found. I found at times that the students, as they were presenting their information about their pathogens didn’t actually understand what the information they found meant, rather they were just spewing it out of their mouth. Jenn caught onto this quickly, and asked guided questions during the students’ presentations in order to make sure the students had actually learned something through their research, and weren’t just relying on what the ‘internet’ said. It was easy to tell which students ‘did their work’ and which ones had not put in the same amount of work. I learned a lot about the varying pathogens from listening to the students presentations and myself gained a more well-rounded knowledge of the different topics the students presented on.

Monday night we had our first official ScieEd pizza party and watched Osmosis Jones. The students had originally proposed this event as a joke and never thought it would actually happen, and I think that it is awesome that Jenn and Kim put in the effort to pull the event together for the students. This just goes to show that they care that much more about their students, and their learning. It enforces the fact that learning can be continued outside the walls of the formalized classroom, and that we can make connections to media and other resources to further our knowledge of certain subjects. This is a great thought to keep in the back of my mind

when planning activities for my students. The students seemed to really enjoy it, and it provided a way to reflect on the content we had been learning in the previous weeks of class and tie them all together.

Wednesday the students finished up their pathogen presentations for the first part of class. I noticed that this group was more prepared to present than the other as they had seen the types of questions Jenn had asked of the previous group, and must have went and looked up the answers to some of the questions they knew she might ask of them. I liked this way of learning in the sense that the students created their own notes for the test in regards to the different pathogens. Each student then will have specialized knowledge in one specific topic, while still learning about all of the others. The second half of class, Dr. Bates brought in slides of the different pathogens we had been talking about in order for students to make a concrete analysis of what these pathogens look like under a microscope. The students were fascinated by the malaria and worms that Kim had to show them. I liked the way the scopes were set up, in the sense that there was no formalized ‘lab’ or procedure to be followed. The students were encouraged to look at the samples under no restrictions, which I believe, allowed them to ask more personalized and higher level questions, than a worksheet or lab manual might have allowed them to.

This Friday, the students didn’t have class, so therefore I didn’t either. On Monday, they will be having their second exam/quiz. I can tell that that students are much more confident going into this test, as they kind of know what to expect this time around. There will be another individual portion on the test as well as a group

portion. Some of the students are nervous and unsure about how in depth they need to study each of the different weather topics and pathogens that each group presented. I know personally, I like the comfort of having a text book, and I think some of the students normally rely on that fact as well. It’s hard for them to pick out what Jenn sees as ‘important’ and what Jenn most likely won’t include. The students were provided with a study guide, but Jenn didn’t want them to rely on us to provide their study session this time around. I’m interested to see how many emails I get this weekend from students about the test. I told the class that I would be willing to meet up with them if they had any questions and wanted to review information. I am confident that our students will do relatively well on the test!

Week of November 2nd

This Monday, I didn’t have to go to class because the students were taking their exam. On Wednesday of this week, the students were given time to work on planning their lessons for CFC. The nice thing about helping the students write their lesson plans on states of matter is that I just recently finished writing a unit on states of matter. A lot of the activities the students wanted to include in their teaching were familiar to me, and I was better able to explain them to the students. Since I’ve had quite a bit of experience working with 4th grade students, and writing lesson plans, the students confided me more than they did Jenn. I was able to tell the students what typically ‘works’ and ‘doesn’t work’ in the classrooms when it comes to this age range of students. For the most part, the students were doing a good job of finding interactive inquiry lessons for the students to take part in. The hardest part for them, was to gauge the level

at which these students are functioning, or what they already know in regards to states of matter. Hopefully later this week we will be able to form a more well-rounded understanding of the types of activities the students should be teaching.

For the remainder of the period, the students looked up data on the NASA website in regards to the various biomes that are present around the world. The students are collecting data, average rain fall and temperature for a certain regions of the world for each biome. From this data, the students will be able to form an understanding of the general trends that are present in each biome. They will compile their data in an Excel data sheet and form their understanding from this inquiry based activity. The remainder of this activity will be finished up on Friday. Some of the students were frustrated with the tediousness of the activity, but the results it yields, I don’t think they realize are extraordinary. As teachers we need to remember that internet links aren’t always reliable, so we have to have a backup plan and be prepared for everything. Some of the student ran into errors we had never seen before, so it was up to us to find ways to remedy the situation and fast, so the students didn’t continue to get frustrated. Overall, it worked out fine and we’ll have to see how the data falls together on Friday!

Today the students walked in and MAYBE two students out of the whole class had figured out the data collecting from the website. Before the start of class, I tried to figure it out with the students, but it wasn’t working still. I could tell Jenn was upset with the students, because they were supposed to have the data compiled in order to complete the activity that we were doing today. As teachers, we need to plan for activities to

take longer than we originally anticipate. Classes seldom run as we plan so we need to have a sense of flexibility in our planning. Technology was NOT on our side this week, but we made it work by using the first hour of class for the students to collect the data instead of just dropping the assignment all together. The lesson was too important to just disregard, and the students realized this as the data was starting to take form. The first hour of the class the students who had their information compiled did a lot of slacking off, as they had nothing else to really do. Our plan was to introduce foldables today, and have each student make one based on the biome they studied. If I were to do this lesson again, I would anticipate that some students would struggle with the technology aspect of the activity, and assign the foldable assignment at the start of class. This way, the students who had figured out how to collect the data could be productive and start working on their project.

The students seemed really excited to do their foldables. Seeing as they are elementary education majors, I’m excited to see the kinds of things they come up with. I heard a lot of the groups talking about all their creative ideas. This is a great way to compile information while letting the students channel their inner creative side! After the students worked on their foldables for a bit, we regrouped as a class and discussed all of the data we compiled from collecting average rain fall and temperature from each biome around the world. The students were amazed to see that the data they collected matched the proposed data for each biome pretty closely. This activity was a great inquiry based lesson that could easily be used in an upper elementary classroom to talk about biomes. If I did this, I would have the data already collected for the students so they could plot it and do

somewhat of the same thing we did in a more simplified forms. I think foldables are also an awesome idea for elementary age students. They are visual, and will greatly help them remember information, as I believe our students will benefit from as well. I remember doing projects like this in elementary school. They were fun ways to organize information and helped in remembering major concepts. On Monday, we will be planning more for our trip to CFC. The students seem to be more confident as the date is approaching and they are figuring out more of what they want to do in the classrooms. They will also be getting their resource collections and tests back. I feel the students might have not done as good on this test because Kim and Jenn called it a ‘quiz’ when really it was just as long, and just as much information as the first test. I don’t think the students studied as much or as in depth. I hope this is not the case, but this is my prediction.

Week of November 9th

This Monday the students spent most of class working on their CFC presentations. It was easy to see leaders emerge in groups, as some of the students had an ‘I don’t really care attitude…” which doesn’t get the work load done and makes me nervous for them actually going into the classroom. A lot of their plans became much more organized, but they were supposed to be using the class time to practice teaching their lessons, which most of them were not. Next Monday, they will be practicing teaching their lesson to our class, and I’m hoping that everything falls into place better, and they actually practice before they present. In a classroom, unless you’re a super experienced teacher, you can’t just ‘wing’ it and I hope their realization of this fact isn’t in the classrooms at CFC. It was neat to see how the student’s

‘proposed’ lessons at the start of the class changed as Jenn and I made more suggestions to them. In order to get a feel for what the students were doing in the classrooms, Jenn and I went around to each group and had them explain; start to finish, the rundown of their lesson. During this time, it was good to ask questions that the students might potentially pose to see if the students have enough knowledge to respond to their inquisitiveness. I brought up a lot of classroom management questions, and made the students think about the transitions between different activities, which are one of the easiest places to let your confidence and lesson fall apart. If you don’t think about the flow of the lesson, and anticipate how the students will react, you will feel less prepared come the actual day of teaching. The students appreciated our probing about these types of things, because before we asked them, they hadn’t really considered how they would affect their teaching. Some of their activities changed greatly, as Jenn and I made suggestions on what will and won’t work based on our personal experiences in the classrooms. The students got their tests back today, and the average yielded the same as the first test, around an 83%. I think the students had a lot more confidence this time around, as they got the same average on this test without a having a review session, like on the last test.

This Wednesday was Veteran’s Day, so we did not have class. The students were supposed to be working on their presentations and foldables. In class this Friday, the students got together with students who had created a foldable for the same biome that they had. They shared their information, which provided the opportunity for them to learn more information that they might not have stumbled upon in their own research. It was neat to see

the creative foldables that the students came up with. Some of them were quite elaborate, and it seemed as if the students had a lot of fun with the projects in general. A lot of them had complained that although they were beneficial, they took longer to make than they had anticipated. It was easy to see why younger kids would like making an information representation such as this, because they were very hands-on and made the students construct their own knowledge and take ownership of their own specific biome. The opportunity for students to learn from one another by sharing information was very beneficial. After Jen had the students get into their biome groups, the students needed to make a visual PowerPoint representation of their information to present to the class. The students did a great job of focusing more on pictures and the important information, rather than just typing words on the PowerPoint and reading from it. An important rule of thumb when making PowerPoints, listening to people read off of them is boring so why would you do that to your students if you don’t like it?! The individualized presentations allowed for the students to present well-rounded information in a fast and organized way, which is great for teachers. There is less time they have to spend sorting out curriculum, and more time for student learning to be maximized. A lot of our projects have been done in the following manner; students researching information and then presenting out to the class – I think the students get nervous about the amounts of information they are required to remember when information is given to them by their peers.

Week of November 16th

This Monday we had two groups present their CFC lessons to the class. Overall, in watching them, I

noticed that the content of their lesson was somewhat surface level. When it comes to teaching about states of matter, there is a lot more information that could be brought to the table, rather than simply discussing the distinctions and characteristics between solids, liquids and gasses. Generally speaking, the information that was presented was done so accurately, but the main thing the students forgot to address was the classroom management aspect of their lessons. I think a lot of them, while teaching, quickly realized where things could easily fall apart, and where they needed to strengthen their lessons. While observing, we got to act as potential 4th graders, which was quite fun. We threw out potential questions and made possible situations that the students might encounter, such as students running in the classroom, because the teachers forgot to instruct them to be safe and not do so. It was a great idea to go through the lessons from start to finish, as it made the students think critically about the information they were telling the children, and its accuracy, as well as how students will act during each activity.

The students had a certain degree of pep and enthusiasm when teaching their lesson to college age students, but their peers weren’t quite as receptive as younger students might be. Hopefully the 4th graders will be more excited about the lessons than the students in our classes were! The lessons were very interactive and student centered, which I think the 4th grade students will enjoy. Some of the groups are afraid that the students are going to have a broader base knowledge of the states of matter, and that they will have to complicate the lesson on the fly. As teachers, we always need to be prepared to know that our students know a lot more than we think they do. Another problem that seemed to arise during the

presentations was the fact of our students asking only comprehension level questions. As future educators, our students won’t learn or expand their knowledge if we only ask them surface level questions. We need to prepare questions that make them think deeper and make connections with what their learning and what they already know. We need to find ways to draw out their knowledge and allow them to make their own meanings.

The last of the groups went on Wednesday. Out of all of the groups, the final group seemed to pull all of the ideas that we had discussed and implemented them into their lesson, as it seemed to flow nicely and was delivered successfully. They seemed very confident, even after drama had developed between the group members. Out of the original 5 students in this group, 3 remained. Therefore, I will be taking on the role of a fourth member and helping the student’s teach their lesson on Friday! YAY! I’m actually excited that I’ll be more of an active part of the activity instead of an observer! It should be interesting due to the fact that I haven’t had time to practice with the group, so I’m going to do the teacher-y thing and fly by the seat of my pants! Hopefully it goes okay! I have confidence in my knowledge of the states of matter to get through the lesson successfully, and the girls in the group are well prepared and dedicated to making sure their lesson is delivered successfully.

Throughout the duration of class, we set up an experiment dealing with osmosis, and hyper and hypotonic solutions. We used an egg soaked in vinegar, and placed it in three different solutions: distilled water, vinegar, and 40% sucrose solution to show weight changes due to liquids moving across the semi-permeable membrane. Our lab results, didn’t yield as we had

expected them to. As the egg in the vinegar solution was supposed to reach an isotonic state of equilibrium, it actually weighed more than the distilled water egg in the end. At the conclusion of class, we discussed our results with Kim, and this happened due to the fact that the vinegar we used was pure vinegar, and not the same vinegar the eggs were soaked in, as the vinegar they were stored in had accumulated calcite from the disintegrated egg shells. In order for our experiment to yield and isotonic liquid, we would have had to use the same vinegar the eggs were originally soaked in. Kim’s class tried it this way, and it worked out. Even though the experiment didn’t work out the way we had intended it to, we can discuss with the students on Monday what actually happened, as the error might actually help the students to better understand the process and concepts being addressed.

Monday – CFC Presentations (Team Jello/2 Kool for Skool)

Wednesday – Egg Membrane experiment/CFC Presentaiton