Week 4

This week has been a more laid back week since today the school of education had teacher interviews our classes were cancelled. Even though we did not have class, I went and check on my ecocolumn and recorded data in my notebook! I get so excited going to see the growth that has occurred since I last saw my terrarium, so I can imagine what this experience would be like for an elementary student! On Tuesday in science methods, we started something new where Dr. Parker puts a question that could potentially be asked in your classroom by one of your students. We have 30 minutes to do research on these questions so we can know the answer when that one kid likes to ask a lot of question! This was a really cool growing experience for me because by having us do the research, we learn more about the topic for ourselves. This week in math methods, we wrote an edTPA style lesson plan with a partner and while working on it, I kept having to stop and look up some of the edTPA vocabulary that I didn't understand. Even though I struggled, I learned something by taking the time to stop and look up anything I didn't understand. This week, the thing that gave me the most satisfaction is creating a visual during our hurricane presentation that helps to visualize that warm, moist air is like fuel to a hurricane. This visual helps me to remember how hurricanes are formed,  and I know it would help an elementary student to understand too. The action steps that I want to complete over the next week include finalizing my overall concept of my unit and start moving forward with the rest of the unit plan! I contributed to the class this week by being involved in class discussions, and working with my classmates to maintain our ecocolumns! Next week, I can help my classmates by being more encouraging to everyone while we are all getting deeper into the semester! This week, I found a resource called Science for us and this is a great website for science education. There are projects, lesson plans, modules for learning, and the best part is that they're all based on the state standards. I will use this resource in my future classroom if there is a module that happens to line up with my standard because I think the kids will be engaged while using this resource. My first top tweet of the week is from David Carruthers and it says "what kind of teacher are you?" then there are 3 different types of teachers listed. A classroom teacher, a school teacher, and a global teacher. This tweet just reminded me how I need to not only strive to be a classroom and a school teacher, but I need to become a global teacher by going outside of my school and sharing ideas that can impact children largely. My second tweet of the week is by Alex Corbitt and it's a visual of "education then vs. education now." This tweet really brought into perspective that education has changed a lot since I was in elementary school and it will continue to change. Instead of having the students sit quietly in desks, the students learn best by being able to talk and discover things by themselves instead of having the teacher stand at the board. We must have our classrooms the way this tweet describes them. My third and final top tweet of the week is by Danny Steele and it is a tweet about building culture in your classroom every day with how you spend your time. This week, I have been following Hurricane Jose, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm for now. I read on The Weather Channel where it will re strengthen into a hurricane and the east coast is at risk for high surf and rip currents. I can connect this to my learning in science methods because we talked on Tuesday about how hurricanes form and we know that a hurricane cannot be present if there is no moist air to fuel it. I am relating my learning from this week to the NCTCS that says "teachers know the content they teach" This week I have learned about how hurricanes are formed and I can now help my students to better understand how they are formed. For chapter twos text facilitation- I really enjoyed the video of the middle school kids being engaged in their inquiry based science lesson. My biggest takeaway from the video is to start every lesson with a question that the students will explore and find answers to. This is much more effective than just telling them the answer the the question because they have to experiment for themselves to find the correct answer. This chapter was solely about scientific inquiry which we have been discussing in science methods. Now that I know all about scientific inquiry, I don't see why anyone wouldn't use this in their classroom because it is a great learning experience for the students to explore for learning.

Week 3

This week has been a great week! I was most proud of myself for collaborating with my science fair group and altering our plan to make a much better project that you can test and hypothesize about. My struggle this week was trying to learn to distinguish between the pieces to the knowledge dimension of blooms revised taxonomy. Having to place the small pieces of paper with the scenarios on them under the paper with the words "factual, procedural, conceptual, and meta cognitive" really helped me and the rest of the class to better understand what each of them means (Thanks Dr. Parker)! The thing that brought me the most satisfaction this week was the Inquiry self check. I really enjoyed reading this website with the eight pointers of how to create an inquiry based classroom and after completing the discussion board, I feel much more prepared to teach with an inquiry based approach! I contributed to the class this week by putting resources in my discussion boards that help with teaching science education and knowing the content since I didn't do so well on the 5th grade science EOG. Next week, I will also put resources for things in all of my discussion boards. Not only is it in the rubric, but because it really does help me and my classmates learn and grow from exploring all of the resources we all post! For my outside learning, I played around with a website (http://www.sciencefun.org) and this is a great resource and I highly recommend my classmates to put it in their resource kits. This website is great for kids to learn science by doing experiments that are safe to do, but also very engaging for the students, there is also a trivia tab as well and if you get a question wrong it tells you why it's wrong and why the correct answer is right. Another fun feature on this website is the science jokes tab. I think these jokes would be a great thing to do before you begin a lesson because the students will automatically lock in on you because you are doing something fun for them! I will use this website to help myself to better learn the science content. My first tweet of the week said "What happens when students own their learning?" and there is a infographic which has many different effects from students owning their learning. Everything listed on the infographic is very important for you students to develop! There is a picture below if you wanna see the infographic. My second tweet is by Tom Loud and in this tweet, he's giving us teachers a friendly reminder that our attitude effects all of the other teachers we work with. This is the same thing in SCED or any class, my attitude can effect all of my colleagues. My third tweet is by Amy Fast and she just reminded me that the goal of our teaching is to give our students a "passion to utilize the material for a greater purpose..."

  This week, I have been following hurricane Irma, and the thing that amazes me the most about weather is that you never know for sure what is going to happen. I can connect my research about Irma to science because hurricanes are science phenomena in action! The NCTCS that I focused on this week was "teachers know the content they teach" I missed some things on the science test and after reflecting on the discussion board, I found that resource I talked about before that can help me learn some of that content and even use some of it in my future classroom!

Week 2

Week two was very beneficial in my learning process. In math methods, we broke down the 8 math standards and put them in our language so we can better understand each standard. I feel so much better having those standards to remember to effectively teach my students. In science methods on Tuesday, we broke out into small groups to discuss the four A's- assumption, argue, ask, act. We applied the four A's to our discussion about phenomena and how to implement it in your classroom. This really helped me to learn what phenomena meant because we went through the four A process. This is a technique I would certainly use in my future classroom. On Thursday in science methods, we created our EcoColumns! This was very exciting to talk about all of the different pieces we cut out to find out how they all work together to create a working eco-system for our little critters and plants! I can't wait for the outcome of this learning experience! Over the next week, I am going to do a little more research about 3D learning and teaching phenomena in the classroom because these things will help with student learning. Next week, I will help my colleagues out more by reporting back to my blog with more information about 3D learning and teaching phenomena. My first tweet of the week is by Todd Whitaker and he says "One of the best indicators of the quality of the teacher is the amount of praise and laughter in the classroom." I think this is very important to keep in mind for having a safe environment where students feel comfortable to learn which is standard 3 of the NCTCS! My second tweet of the week is about writing your classroom rules in a way that tells students what they should do rather than what they shouldn't do. This also goes along with standard 3 because using rules in a positive way make the students feel more comfortable in their learning environment. My third tweet for this week was a board in your classroom dedicated for characteristics of an innovator! I think this would be great to use in your classroom because your students can look at the characteristics and follow them to become an innovator! This goes along with standard four of the NCTCS because I would be facilitating learning to my students to learn problem solving techniques displayed on the board. The current event I have been keeping up with is Hurricane Harvey and how it is devastating a lot of people! This is a phenomena that you can teach in your classroom because hurricanes are a part of weather and since it is a current event, it is also relatable to your students! Within the first two weeks of classes, I already feel more prepared to teach science and math, and that makes me super excited for the remainder of the semester!

Week 1

This week has been a great week getting started back to classes! I am proud of myself for remaining positive throughout the first week of class and schoolwork! My biggest struggle this week was getting organized for the upcoming semester and making sure everything is in place for the semester. Over the next week, I would like to stay on top of all of my work and possibly even get ahead in my classes! I contributed in the class discussion today about buoyancy by actively discussing with my team members! In order to help my colleagues out over the semester, I will try to share ideas and lesson plans to help each classmate. My first tweet I found interesting was the visual of the science behind the eclipse and how the moon covered the sun. This is a great visual to show your students while teaching them about the eclipse. My second tweet is by Amy Fast, which is someone Dr. Parker suggested that we follow and I am glad that I did. This tweet is basically saying that if a student passes a test and their passions, goals, and mindsets are not met, then we have failed them as teachers. This stood out to me because as a student, I used to get very frustrated when I took a test because it seemed pointless to me if it did not contain something that interested me. I believe that it is much easier to learn if you are engaged with the topic and enjoy what you are learning about. For my third and final tweet of the week, it's like an eye opener for me as a teacher because Amy Fast says that we as teachers are constantly trying to measure how well our students are doing, but we rarely ever ask them how they are doing. I think it is important to have a relationship with your students and show them that you care about their well-being and their grades. This tweet has a checklist for your students to fill out how they are feeling so that way you know exactly how they feel. As everyone knows, The Great Eclipse was on Monday, which was really exciting to watch for me! The temperature dropped, and even though I was not under the line of totality, it got a little more dim outside! My favorite thing about this event is that it's very rare to happen and I am so happy I could experience it! I learned that if I become a successful science teacher, I will be able to properly facilitate learning in my classroom! I cannot wait to see what the semester has in store for me as a future teacher!

Blog reflection

Blogging this semester has helped me to grow as a future teacher. I have learned the true importance of self reflection by doing this. Blogging strongly connects to standard 5 of the NCPTS which is "Teachers reflect on their practice." Reflection is powerful and purposeful to teaching. After reflecting upon something, you know what you as the teacher could've done differently in a lesson, what worked well in a lesson, and what didn't work at all in a lesson. Reflection helps me as a teacher and student to grow as a professional. Throughout the semester, blogging helped me to grow because once I had completed my assignments for the week, I would have the chance to go back and analyze them and talk about how I did. This showed me that there is always room for growth when learning. I will use reflection as a key aspect in my classroom. My students will be required to reflect on their assignments so as a teacher, I can understand their thoughts and as a student, they can grow in that subject area by reflecting. In my future classes at Gardner-Webb and in my future classroom as a teacher, reflection will be utilized as much as possible. I believe that reflection has helped me to learn from my mistakes and build upon my learning. 

Week 14

Week 13 was really fun at Washington Elementary! When we got there in the morning, our class was in the gym for a musical they were having that night! When the kids all went back to class, a little girls nose started bleeding and I got to help her stop bleeding and I realized that being a teacher is more than just teaching the kids. You are also a doctor, mother, dentist, and much more! After all of the commotion, the kids were working on a math activity where they were trying to make animal figures out of shapes like big squares, small squares, some different sized triangles and a parallelogram. Everyone got to create something different and then create a habitat for their animal to be in! I love seeing hands on, fun activities in the classroom that benefit the children's learning on a particular topic. Then, for the rest of the day we broke off in groups and did cute Easter crafts with the kids since they were going on spring break. I was in charge of the "create an Easter egg" station along with making carrots out of a plastic bag and orange Reese's pieces. I love to be able to watch kids creative juices flowing and see how excited they get about being able to be creative. For my outside research, even though I am in 311, I have been more heavily focusing on ways to integrate arts into my lesson plans! This goes along with standard 4 of the NCPTS which is "teachers facilitate learning in their classrooms" I think that integrating arts into your lesson plans is an efficient way to facilitate learning to your students. Although it is Easter break, the hard work doesn't stop! However, we are less than a month away from summer break! Week 14 was very busy and informative. We did not go to Washington this week, we did have class and we were able to work on our units as well as things going along with the Katie Kath event and the science night coming up. I think my hard work this week falls into the "Teachers lead in their classroom" standard of the NCPTS because I am demonstrating leadership by helping out with all of these educational events and it is expanding my knowledge so that way I can effectively teach my students.

Week 12

Week 12 was a very busy week for me as I was in Daytona beach, Florida competing at cheerleading nationals with the Gardner-Webb Cheer team. However, the wi-fi at the hotel was terrible and I could not complete any online work. I started on my traditional lesson plan and I am preparing for teaching my clinical lesson plan as well. I am very excited to see what the next few weeks of school left hold. We only have two more times at Washington for the semester which is sad but exciting at the same time because that means it is almost summer! For my traditional lesson plan, I have been really practicing my integration skills and I get super excited when I find a way to integrate another subject into my lesson plans. This connects to a part of standard 3, or teachers know the content they teach. Teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines. I have been able to find a way to integrate social studies, arts, language arts, science, and math in some of my lessons and by doing that I have achieved the ability to recognize how all of the content areas connect. I will use integration in my future classroom with every lesson that I teach so that my students will be skilled in all areas and they too can recognize the interconnectedness of the content areas.